William Froude was born on 28 November 1810, in Dartington, Devon in the South West of England. After graduating from Oxford University he worked with Isambard Kingdom Brunel as a railway engineer and was responsible for several innovations. He was what today would be called a “lateral thinker”, but with a rigid scientific approach.
In 1846 he turned his interests to Naval Engineering. The need for increasing the speed and efficiency of their ships had been recognised by the Royal Navy, and Froude set about studying the resistant forces between ship and sea, recognising the important impact of wave formation.
Using towed models Froude demonstrated that the speed in respect of size, or, “corresponding speed' as it is called, should be the ratio of the length to the square of the speed. This relative speed is known more in the form of the ratio of speed to the square root of the length. He developed what was termed “Froude’s Law of Comparison.” Based on this principle he was able to successfully design ships’ hulls to minimise resistance and increase fuel efficiency. Two of his early models are on display in the Science Museum in South Kensington, London.
William Froude (Wikipedia)
In 1870 he was allocated an amount of £2 000 to build the world’s first ship model testing tank. The seventy six metres long tank was built on Froude’s land at Torquay and...
