Flying On Water
PHOTO: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY/BELL FAMILY COLLECTION
The HD-4 prepares for tests with the new Liberty engines; (inset) Inventor Alexander Graham Bell.
Everybody knows Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, and many are aware he was responsible for the first manned aircraft flight in Canada when the Silver Dart lifted into the bone-chilling February air over the ice-covered Bras d’Or Lakes in 1909. But few realize he was also the force behind the world’s fastest boat, a futuristic-looking “winged watercraft” that set a speed record in 1919 that stood for more than a decade.
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On a warm summer’s day in 1861, on the Surrey Canal in southeast England, Thomas Moy was experimenting with the aerodynamics of wings by...