The Hovercraft 

A Short History and Resources for More Information

Many people worked on the idea of the hovercraft on over the years. Many claim to have created the hovercraft or Air Cushion Vehicle (ACV) long before the SRN1 was built. The first commercial hovercraft both in name and design was the brainchild of the inventor Sir Christopher Cockrell. He achieved the one thing that everyone else was chasing and that was a working example of a hovering vehicle on a cushion of air. The first working example of a Hovercraft was shown in public in June 1959. The craft was called the Saunders Roe Nautical One or SRN1 for short.

The SRN1 however was not born without a lot of hard work and pain of Sir Christopher's part. He had a hard time convincing everyone that it was viable. He built a working model to show the principle and demonstrated this to many people before his concept was accepted and taken seriously. You can find out more about the background to the development of the modern Hovercraft in our section called How It works - The Hovercraft and our book 'Discover the Hovercraft'

It is on occasional display at the Museum of Science and Industry's storage facility west of London at an old RAF base called Wroughton. It has been well preserved and looked after following its retirement from research service. It was modified a number of times during its test period and the final form of the SRN1 bears the basic layout of its original design but has some power plant and bow shape changes. 

A jet engine was added to experiment with forward thrust options during the test period and this is how it is today. A rubber skirt replaced the original peripheral jet system as the tests converged towards the present day design of the hovercraft.

Want to find out more about Hovercraft History? 

Then click on the picture above and visit the web site for the Hovercraft Museum