Not Much Of An Engineer:- An Autobiography

Product Information

Hooker and his revitalised team then went on to complete the design of the more advanced RB211-524 series. This man made a great contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany, his innovative work with superchargers increasing the power of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine by 100%; had a great deal to do with the vectored thrust turbofan engine that powered the Hawker Harrier Jump-jet; Concorde; was brought back from retirement to help sort out the problems of the RB211 engines that had sent Rolls-Royce into bankruptcy in early 1971; and rubbed shoulders with the men whose careers had been molded by their work with Henry Royce. At the same time Rolls decided that their existing piston engines were a dead end, and moved all future jet work from Barnoldswick to Derby, their main engine site. Frank Whittle was an outstanding engineer, but I managed to hone some of the features of his design to increase the engine's performance.

From the first screech of his electric guitar upsetting musicians at a folk festival to his writing and paintings, Bob Dylan has risen to become a seminal force in American popular culture. Professor Bairstow had an all-consuming obsession, and that was to solve the equations of motion of a viscous fluid. The department had a small wind tunnel, and I was able to make experiments on the flow of air and found, somewhat to my surprise, how much I enjoyed such work. They were great friends of course, and Wilkes, smilingly ignoring the jibe, replied, ‘We can’t get on with the fellow at all, and I would like to be shot of the whole business. BAE Systems will collect and process information about you that may be subject to data protection laws.He had lit up immediately, and, although the nurses rushed in, all he would say was ‘Don’t tell the doctor, please. This seems to have been another of his skills – explaining complex issues in a manner accessible to a wide audience. Sir Stanley Hooker has written a book that helps one understand turbine engineering and more interestingly the history and really quite tortuous politics behind them. Wellands went on to power the earliest models of the Gloster Meteor, and a development of the Welland known as the Derwent powered the vast majority of the later models.

Things being thus, I had plenty of time to cogitate on the curious chain of events which had led me, at the age of 31 years, to be seated in an office in the Engineering Department of the great Rolls-Royce company doing nothing — especially as I had had no previous aspirations to be an engineer.I suppose this was my first tentative step in the direction of engineering, but, because of Levy’s influence in directing me towards hydrodynamics (the flow of fluids), I found that the most interesting part of the Aeronautics course was the aerodynamic flow of air around the wings of aircraft, thus producing the lift and the drag. Interesting information about aero engine development during the war, and commercial jet engine development afterwards. They made the dreariness of being bed-ridden into an experience which I can now look back to with enormous pleasure and gratitude.

I. Taylor ranks at the very top — before Prandtl of Göttingen, von Kármán of Aachen or Southwell of Oxford. At the time when I was taken to the Faversham Cottage Hospital it was the custom for people injured in road accidents to be treated and boarded free of charge. Less comfortable must have been his injuries from accidents on the sporting field and motorcycle, which kept him immobile for almost a year. PEGASUS - THE HEART OF THE HARRIER: The History and Development of the World's First Operational Vertical Take-off and Landing Jet Engine.I went home to Kent in March 1930 but on Good Friday I had a motor-cycling accident, breaking my leg again, and this time my right arm for good measure. One of the heroes of Stanley Hooker’s first career: Ernest Hives as he looked when Hooker first met him. After a few days spent reading The Times, Hooker timidly ventured into surrounding work spaces, where young men were hard at work over drawing boards. With uncanny precision he managed to put off death until the day before the actual publication of the work. Once the story became the developement of the jet engine I found that even more interesting, considering my life long fascination has been the piston engine.

To me, he seemed self-critical and full of praise for many of the people involved throughout his career.In the early years waitress service for senior management seems to have been commonplace in large businesses compared with today where there might be nothing more than a vending machine or a sandwich van available for all. Neuware - Stanley Hooker joined the Bristol Aeroplane Company in 1949 and tugged a rather reluctant company into the jet age, determined to give real competition to Rolls-Royce. And what was I going to do in the formidable Rolls-Royce company, which represented the very pinnacle of engineering excellence? But fate intervened, and in December 1929, I suffered a broken leg in a football match against University College Hospital. One thing I did like about this book is that Mr Hooker does not have a bad word to say about any of the people he talks about (asside from Nicolae Ceaușescu).