science · 13 October 1963 · 61 years ago
death
Died 13 Oct 1963 at age 70 (born 13 Jun 1893).
Alan Arnold Griffith was a British aeronautical engineer. During the late 1920s, A.A. Griffith and F. Whittle independently made the first practical proposals for the use of gas turbine engines in aircraft. Griffith concentrated on developing an axial flow compressor, and in 1929 he proposed a gas turbine engine driving a propeller, the so called turbo-prop engine. Earlier, in 1917, with G.I.Taylor, he published a pioneering article on the use of soap films in solving torsion problems. In 1920, he published a seminal article on the theory of the brittle fracture. At Rolls Royce (1939-60) he designed turbojet engines, and in the 1950s, vertical take-off aircraft. He developed the remarkable "flying bedstead" which first flew in 1954.
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