Virgilius Justin Capră (22 February 1933 – 19 January 2015) was a
Romania
Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, a ...
n engineer and inventor.
Biography
Born in
Măgureni,
Prahova County
Prahova County () is a county (județ) of Romania, in the historical region Muntenia, with the capital city at Ploiești.
Demographics
In 2011, it had a population of 762,886 and the population density was 161/km². It is Romania's third most ...
, he was trained as an aeronautical engineer. He claimed to have devised over a hundred inventions,
although a search revealed only two patents in his name. Machines on which he worked included 72 fuel-efficient cars, 15 unconventional engines and seven aircraft. He reported that as early as 1949–1950, he built a motor that would respond to verbal commands. A 1955 two-wheel automobile, which he dubbed the Virgilius, used an airplane motor, reached 300 km/hour and weighed 250 kg.
One of his cars, which he called the Soleta and which he modeled in 1973, was unusually small. It consumed 0.5 liters of gasoline per 100 km.
Later, he continued developing prototypes for battery-powered motors, with a particular focus on increased efficiency and decreased weight.
Perhaps his most notorious claim is to have invented the
jet pack. According to an interview he gave, he proposed this device to the
Romanian Academy
The Romanian Academy ( ro, Academia Română ) is a cultural forum founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 1866. It covers the scientific, artistic and literary domains. The academy has 181 active members who are elected for life.
According to its by ...
in 1956 and completed it in 1958. When the Academy declined to show interest, he offered it to the
American Embassy, which was also uninterested. He was then jailed by the
Communist regime
A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state that is administered and governed by a communist party guided by Marxism–Leninism. Marxism–Leninism was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, the Com ...
for having approached the embassy. He claimed to have flown the device and received a patent in 1958. Although he later showed photographs of a device, he was unable to prove when he built it, whether he flew it or when the photographs were taken. He never explained how he learned to fly his device, how long he stayed airborne, how many times he flew it, or why there is no contemporary documentation of the flight.
Nevertheless, in Romania alone, his claim to have invented the jet pack is widely believed. While Capră undoubtedly built two jet pack-like devices, the second one dated from the mid-1960s, and he claimed that as the groundbreaking model. At the same time, he admitted his 1958 design did not work. Still, he claimed that an American design for a jet pack only appeared in 1962, four years after his own. However, one team from
Bell Laboratories
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mul ...
applied for a patent in 1960, while another, from
Thompson Ramo Woolridge
TRW Inc., was an American corporation involved in a variety of businesses, mainly aerospace, electronics, automotive, and credit reporting.http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/TRW-Inc-Company-History.html TRW Inc. It was a pioneer ...
in Ohio, filed in 1958, the same year Capră said he filed in Romania. Despite the shakiness of Capră's assertions, it is widely accepted in Romania that at least one of his jet packs was flown before Bell's. Additionally, many Romanian sources on Capră state that "the Americans" stole his design. What likely transpired is that Capră' who had no independent evidence he built anything before 1967, saw the Bell model fly and copied it. This second model is in a museum in
Bucharest
Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north ...
, although he probably never flew it. Late in life, he began to state that he beat Bell by two years. A resident of
Filipeștii de Pădure in his later years, he died in
Ploiești
Ploiești ( , , ), formerly spelled Ploești, is a city and county seat in Prahova County, Romania. Part of the historical region of Muntenia, it is located north of Bucharest.
The area of Ploiești is around , and it borders the Blejoi commun ...
.
Notes
References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Capra, Justin
1933 births
2015 deaths
People from Prahova County
Romanian engineers
Romanian inventors