Melville Whitnel Beardsley (10 October 1913 in

Kansas City, Missouri Kansas City (abbreviated KC or KCMO) is the largest city in Missouri by population and area. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 508,090 in 2020, making it the 36th most-populous city in the United States. It is the central ...

– 26 November 1998 in

Carmel, California Carmel-by-the-Sea (), often simply called Carmel, is a city in Monterey County, California, United States, founded in 1902 and municipal corporation, incorporated on October 31, 1916. Situated on the Monterey Peninsula, Carmel is known for its n ...

) was the

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

and

aeronautical engineer Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is si ...

whose pioneering efforts may have contributed to the invention of the

hovercraft A hovercraft, also known as an air-cushion vehicle or ACV, is an amphibious Craft (vehicle), craft capable of travelling over land, water, mud, ice, and other surfaces. Hovercraft use blowers to produce a large volume of air below the hull ...

. Melville Beardsley was born in

on 10 October 1913, to George and Ella Whitnel Beardsley. His father and grandfather Beardsley were attorneys. He was the third generation of his family to graduate from the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...

, where he took a degree in

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, and ...

. From childhood he was fascinated with flight, and soon after college he joined the

United States Army Air Corps The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the aerial warfare service component of the United States Army between 1926 and 1941. After World War I, as early aviation became an increasingly important part of modern warfare, a philosophical r ...

as a

pilot An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators, because they a ...

. By the time

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

broke out, he was one of the Army's few experienced pilots and spent the war years as a flight instructor at Hondo Field, Texas. The

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(and later

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

which was created out of the Army's Air Corps) sponsored post-graduate education in

aeronautics Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design, and manufacturing of air flight–capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere. The British Royal Aeronautical Society identifies ...

and

management Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includes the activities o ...

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and the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

. He was USAF project officer for Northrup's famous flying wing.

Beardsley's Early Years in ACV Development

It's difficult to establish exactly when Mel Beardsley conceived the air-cushion vehicle, but he worked on a Navy hydrofoil project in southern California about 1950, and this was his first known involvement in marine vehicles. The air-cushion may have been a low-friction boat-hull solution, to which Beardsley added forced air as the missing element for the basic air-cushion vehicle. It is certain that Beardsley and the British inventor Cockerell conceived the air-cushion vehicle independently. It was not possible for them to have known of each other's work. One may say that "the idea was in the air" and inevitable. Beardsley's further personal research led to his patents of the early 1950s. After completing another 7 years of military service, Beardsley founded

National Research Associates, Inc In 1958 Melville W. Beardsley founded National Research Associates company. NRA developed and tested over 30 air cushion vehicles, with the Air Gem Air cushion vehicle produced as their first product. NRA also sold Disney's Flying Saucers attracti ...

. (NRA) in College Park and

Laurel, Maryland Laurel is a city in Maryland, United States, located midway between Washington and Baltimore on the banks of the Patuxent River. While the city limits are entirely in northern Prince George's County, outlying developments extend into Anne Arunde ...

to build practical air-cushion vehicles. Beardsley's experiments led to the development of the skirt and peripheral air-flow, without which hovercraft are impractical. A patent dispute had developed in the early 1960s to determine who had first come up with the ACV-hovercraft concept, Cockerell or Beardsley. Ultimately Cockerell paid a settlement of $85,000 to Beardsley for his patent rights, equivalent to $ in dollars, which made practical the famous Channel hovercraft.

Beardsley Air Car Company and Skimmers, Inc.

Mel Beardsley still had a briefcase full of designs. One of the prototypes NRA made was the "Little Skimmer." It was a very basic solo ACV which could get up to 15 MPH. He established successively two companies in his home, Beardsley Air Car Company and Skimmers, Inc., and set out to see what market there was for sports model ACVs. Rather than add an extra engine and fan facing the rear, as in his earlier Aqua-GEM model, Beardsley conceived a single-engine, single-fan design which was a forerunner of all modern sports hovercraft.

Later life

Mel Beardsley worked from 1965 to 1976 with the Naval Ship Research and Development Center (NSRDC) near

Annapolis, Maryland Annapolis ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Maryland and the county seat of, and only incorporated city in, Anne Arundel County. Situated on the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of the Severn River, south of Baltimore and about east o ...

. The large air-cushion vehicles used today by the US military are largely a product of their design and testing. In his retirement he invented, tested, and patented the Beachbuilder system of

beach erosion Coastal erosion is the loss or displacement of land, or the long-term removal of sediment and rocks along the coastline due to the action of waves, currents, tides, wind-driven water, waterborne ice, or other impacts of storms. The landward ...

prevention. Beardsley died 26 November 1998.

References

* https://web.archive.org/web/20110718140051/http://www.yatesriomar.com/acv.htm * "Jet-Age Boat Tested on Bay" from ''The Evening Star'' (Washington, DC), 4 August 1961 * "Amphibian Vehicle Riding on Air Cushion is Shown" in ''Baltimore Sun'' 3 August 1961. * "Craft is Designed for Cushion-Air (sic) Trip to World's Fair" from the ''New York Times'', 15 June 1962. * "'The Little Skimmer' from Fairwinds: Unique Amphibious Vehicle Rides on Cushion of Air, Goes About 20 MPH" from ''The Maryland Gazette'' 10 December 1964. {{DEFAULTSORT:Beardsley, Melville W. 1913 births 1998 deaths People from Kansas City, Missouri Grainger College of Engineering alumni United States Air Force officers United States Army Air Forces pilots of World War II United States Army Air Forces officers 20th-century American inventors