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Imperial Airship Scheme
The British Imperial Airship Scheme was a 1920s project to improve communication between Britain and the distant countries of the British Empire by establishing air routes using airships. The first phase was the construction of two large and technically advanced airships, the R100 and the R101; the R100 made a successful transatlantic crossing to Canada in 1930 in 78 hours. The scheme was terminated in 1931 following the crash in France of R101 in October 1930, while attempting its first flight to India. Early proposals In July 1921 A. H. Ashbolt, the Agent-General for Tasmania, proposed the creation of an Imperial Airship Company to the Imperial Conference being held in London. The use of heavier-than-air craft over such distances was seen as impractical at this time. This was to be partly financed by the countries of the Empire, with some funding from private sources and the rest provided by the British government. A sub-committee chaired by Frederick Guest, the Secretary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
R100
His Majesty's Airship R100 was a privately designed and built British rigid airship made as part of a two-ship competition to develop a commercial airship service for use on British Empire routes as part of the Imperial Airship Scheme. The other airship, the R101, was built by the British Air Ministry, but both airships were funded by the Government. R100 was built by the Airship Guarantee Company, a specially created subsidiary of the armaments firm Vickers-Armstrongs, led by Commander Dennis Burney. The design team was headed by Barnes Wallis, later famous for his invention of the bouncing bomb. The design team also included Nevil Shute Norway as the senior stress engineer (see his '' Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer''). R100 first flew in December 1929. It made a series of trial flights and a successful return crossing of the Atlantic in July–August 1930, but following the crash of R101 in October 1930 the Imperial Airship Scheme was terminated and R100 was bro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bonar Law
Andrew Bonar Law ( ; 16 September 1858 – 30 October 1923) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1922 to May 1923. Law was born in the British colony of New Brunswick (now a Canadian province). He was of Scottish and Ulster Scots descent and moved to Scotland in 1870. He left school aged sixteen to work in the iron industry, becoming a wealthy man by the age of thirty. He entered the House of Commons at the 1900 general election, relatively late in life for a front-rank politician; he was made a junior minister, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in 1902. Law joined the Shadow Cabinet in opposition after the 1906 general election. In 1911, he was appointed a Privy Councillor, before standing for the vacant party leadership. Despite never having served in the Cabinet and despite trailing third after Walter Long and Austen Chamberlain, Law became leader when the two front-runners withdrew rathe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Autobiography Of An Engineer
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English periodical ''The Monthly Review'', when he suggested the word as a hybrid, but condemned it as "pedantic". However, its next recorded use was in its present sense, by Robert Southey in 1809. Despite only being named early in the nineteenth century, first-person autobiographical writing originates in antiquity. Roy Pascal differentiates autobiography from the periodic self-reflective mode of journal or diary writing by noting that " utobiographyis a review of a life from a particular moment in time, while the diary, however reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time". Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's life from the moment of composition. While biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barnes Wallis
Sir Barnes Neville Wallis (26 September 1887 – 30 October 1979) was an English engineer and inventor. He is best known for inventing the bouncing bomb used by the Royal Air Force in Operation Chastise (the "Dambusters" raid) to attack the dams of the Ruhr Valley during World War II. The raid was the subject of the 1955 film '' The Dam Busters'', in which Wallis was played by Michael Redgrave. Among his other inventions were his version of the geodetic airframe and the earthquake bomb. Early life and education Barnes Wallis was born in Ripley, Derbyshire, to Charles William George Robinson Wallis (1859–1945) and his wife Edith Eyre Wallis née Ashby (1859–1911). He was educated at Christ's Hospital in Horsham and Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham Boys' Grammar School in southeast London, leaving school at seventeen to start work in January 1905 at Thames Engineering Works at Blackheath, southeast London. He subsequently changed his apprenticeship to J. Samuel White's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cardington, Bedfordshire
Cardington is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Bedford in Bedfordshire, England. Part of the ancient hundred of Wixamtree, the settlement is best known in connection with the Cardington airship works founded by Short Brothers during World War I, which later became an RAF training station. However most of the former RAF station is actually in the parish of Eastcotts, as is the settlement of Shortstown, which was originally built by Short Brothers for its workers. The village of Cardington is located to the north east of Shortstown and the RAF station, and houses most of the population of the parish, which was 270 in 2005, making it one of the least populated parishes in Bedfordshire. Sites of interest The Church of St Mary the Virgin has pieces dating from the 12th century, although the church itself was mostly rebuilt between 1898 and 1902. It is a Grade II listed building. Airships, barrage balloons and RAF Cardington Cardington became one of the major Briti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Airship Works
Cardington Airfield, previously RAF Cardington, is a former Royal Air Force Royal Air Force station, station in Bedfordshire, England, with a long and varied history, particularly in relation to airships and balloons. Most of the former RAF station is in the parish of Eastcotts, as is the settlement of Shortstown. History Birth under the Short brothers The site started life as a private venture when aircraft manufacturing company Short Brothers bought land there to build airships for the British Admiralty, Admiralty. It constructed a Airship hangar (the No. 1 Shed) in 1915 to enable it to build two rigid airships, the R31 (airship), R-31 and the R32 (airship), R-32. Short also built a housing estate, opposite the site, which it named Shortstown. Royal Airship Works The airships site was nationalised in April 1919, becoming known as the Royal Airship Works. In preparation for the R101 project, the No. 1 shed was extended between October 1924 and March 1926; its roof ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First MacDonald Ministry
The first MacDonald ministry of the United Kingdom lasted from January to November 1924. The Labour Party, under Ramsay MacDonald, had failed to win the general election of December 1923, with 191 seats, although the combined Opposition tally exceeded that of the Conservative government, creating a hung parliament. Stanley Baldwin remained in office until January 1924. The Conservatives had won the previous general election held in 1922 shortly after the fall of the Lloyd George Coalition when along with their Unionist allies, they had won 344 seats. This seemed a significant enough majority to expect a full parliamentary term. Nevertheless, shortly after the election the Conservative leader Bonar Law died and was replaced by Baldwin, who reneged on his predecessor's electoral pledge not to introduce protective tariffs. Baldwin sought a fresh mandate from the electorate in 1923. The result was decisive, being against protectionism, and it was clear that the Conservatives had ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First Labour Government (UK)
The first MacDonald ministry of the United Kingdom lasted from January to November 1924. The Labour Party, under Ramsay MacDonald, had failed to win the general election of December 1923, with 191 seats, although the combined Opposition tally exceeded that of the Conservative government, creating a hung parliament. Stanley Baldwin remained in office until January 1924. The Conservatives had won the previous general election held in 1922 shortly after the fall of the Lloyd George Coalition when along with their Unionist allies, they had won 344 seats. This seemed a significant enough majority to expect a full parliamentary term. Nevertheless, shortly after the election the Conservative leader Bonar Law died and was replaced by Baldwin, who reneged on his predecessor's electoral pledge not to introduce protective tariffs. Baldwin sought a fresh mandate from the electorate in 1923. The result was decisive, being against protectionism, and it was clear that the Conservatives had ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ramsay MacDonald
James Ramsay MacDonald (; 12 October 18669 November 1937) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the first who belonged to the Labour Party, leading minority Labour governments for nine months in 1924 and again between 1929 and 1931. From 1931 to 1935, he headed a National Government dominated by the Conservative Party and supported by only a few Labour members. MacDonald was expelled from the Labour Party as a result. MacDonald, along with Keir Hardie and Arthur Henderson, was one of the three principal founders of the Labour Party in 1900. He was chairman of the Labour MPs before 1914 and, after an eclipse in his career caused by his opposition to the First World War, he was Leader of the Labour Party from 1922. The second Labour Government (1929–1931) was dominated by the Great Depression. He formed the National Government to carry out spending cuts to defend the gold standard, but it had to be abandoned after the Invergordon Mu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hung Parliament
A hung parliament is a term used in legislatures primarily under the Westminster system to describe a situation in which no single political party or pre-existing coalition (also known as an alliance or bloc) has an absolute majority of legislators (commonly known as members or seats) in a parliament or other legislature. This situation is also known as a balanced parliament, or as a legislature under no overall control (NOC), and can result in a minority government. The term is irrelevant in multi-party systems where it is rare for a single party to hold a majority. In the Westminster system, in the absence of a clear majority, no party or coalition has an automatic mandate to assume control of the executive — a status usually known in parliamentary systems as "forming (a) government". It is possible that an absolute majority may still be gained through the formation of a new coalition government, or the addition of previously unaffiliated members to a pre-existing coalit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1923 United Kingdom General Election
The 1923 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 6 December 1923. The Conservative Party (UK), Conservatives, led by Stanley Baldwin, won the most seats, but Labour Party (UK), Labour, led by Ramsay MacDonald, and H. H. Asquith's reunited Liberal Party (UK), Liberal Party gained enough seats to produce a hung parliament. It is the most recent UK general election in which a third party (here, the Liberals) won over 100 seats. The Liberals' percentage of the vote, 29.7%, has not been exceeded by a third party at any general election since. MacDonald formed the First MacDonald ministry, first ever Labour government with tacit support from the Liberals. Rather than trying to bring the Liberals back into government, Asquith's motivation for permitting Labour to enter power was that he hoped they would prove to be incompetent and quickly lose support. Being a minority, MacDonald's government only lasted ten months and another general election was held in 1924 United Kingdo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Masefield
Sir Peter Masefield (19 March 1914 - 14 February 2006) was a leading figure in Britain's post war aviation industry, as Chief Executive of British European Airways in the 1950s, and chairman of the British Airports Authority in the 1960s. History Peter Gordon Masefield was born in 1914 in Trentham, Staffordshire. Initially educated at Westminster School and Chillon College in Montreux, Switzerland, Masefield studied engineering at Jesus College, Cambridge. Following a childhood fascination with aircraft, Masefield gained his pilot's licence while in Cambridge which he maintained for the rest of his career. Masefield initially worked as a junior draughtsman at Fairey Aviation from 1935 to 1937, before moving into journalism on the staff of ''The Aeroplane'' 1937–1943. He became aviation correspondent for ''The Sunday Times'', and at the start of the Second World War was sent to France to cover the RAF Advanced Air Striking Force. Turned down by the Royal Air Force as a pilot d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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