|
SANFORD
A MOSS (1872-1946)
At the age of 16, while
employed as
a $4 per week mechanic in a shop that produced compressed air
machinery, Sanford
Moss had the idea
that if fuel could be burned in compressed air, the energy output
would be
increased tremendously. This idea, which was to make possible the
altitudes,
speed, and range of today's aircraft, came years before the Wright
Brothers
made their historic flight at Kitty Hawk.
Moss
took the idea with him to the University of California.
By 1900 he had earned his
Bachelor's and Master's degrees, and he went on to Cornell where, in
1903, he
wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the gas turbine. The thesis attracted the
interest of
engineers at GE and got him a job at the West Lynn
plant. Working with Charles Steinmetz and Elihu Thomson, Moss first
concentrated on centrifugal compressors used in blast furnaces and
then on
steam turbine development. The experience he gained in these fields
was recognized
during the first World War by the National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics,
which asked him to find a way to give military planes more power.
Moss's
solution, worked out with the cooperation of the U.S. Air Corps, was the
turbocharger - a unique turbine-type compressor.
On June
19, 1918, Moss and his associates
ascended Pikes Peak with a 350-horsepower Liberty
engine in tow in order to test his turbosupercharger. The new device
attached
to the reciprocating engine was designed to boost power by compressing
air into
the intake, allowing the engine to "breathe" normally even in the
thin air at 14,019 feet. The test was successful, and in 1921, a new
world
altitude record of 40,800 feet was established in a biplane equipped
with the
device. Interest in it extended even to the automobile racing circuits,
where at
least one Indianapolis
500 winning car was fitted with a Moss turbosupercharger.
During
most of the period between
World War I and World War II, while at GE's Lynn Works, Moss also
developed the
geared supercharger using design principles that have since been
followed on
most radial-type airplane engines. Although 65 at the time, he returned
to GE at the outbreak of World War II and went to work refining the
turbosupercharger. When the United States entered the
war, he became consultant
to the Army Air Forces. Soon, the B-17 Flying Fortresses, the B-24
Liberators,
the P-47 Thunderbolts, and, later, the B-29 Superfortresses, all
equipped with
turbosuperchargers, were flying higher, faster, and farther than planes
had
ever flown.
As for
the industrial gas turbine,
it waited until after World War II when GE engineers combined
metallurgical
developments with new jet engine technologies to turn Moss's dream of
some 40
years earlier into reality. Moss's technical contributions were also
evident in
areas outside of the hardware used in airplanes, automobiles and
industrial
equipment. He will be remembered for the militant enthusiasm and energy
with
which he advanced the standardization of symbols and terms used
internationally
in science and engineering. As a result
of his pioneering efforts, Moss received the Collier Aviation Trophy in
1941,
the Sylvanus Albert Reed Award of the Institute of the Aeronautical
Sciences,
the A.S.M.E. Holley Medal and the Howard N. Potts Medal of the Franklin
Institute.
|
