Abstract
ROBERT EDMUND FROUDE, who passed away.—L V at Cambridge on March 19 after a brief illness, came of a distinguished family. One of his uncles was the celebrated historian, James Anthony Froude, professor of modern history at Oxford, and author of many well-known historical works, while another uncle, Hurrell Froude, took a prominent part in the Oxford Tract movement. His father, the late William Froude, F.R.S., devoted a lifetime to research in ship propulsion, and was the pioneer of the system of testing the probable qualities of a proposed ship design by towing experiments in an “experiment tank” on a model hull carefully made to the exact proportions of the intended ship. Beaufoy, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, had carried out some interesting experiments oh frictional resistance in the open water of the Greenland Dock (London), but it was William Froude who conceived and carried out the idea of having a large covered tank specially built in which ship models were tested for resistance. This tank was erected at Chelston Cross near Torquay about 1870, and it was there that the earliest work of this kind was carried out. How the system has spread may be gathered from the fact that in Great Britain alone six such tanks, for warship and merchant ship models, all much larger and more completely equipped than their prototype, are now built and fully occupied; while similar tanks exist in America, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Holland, Russia, and Japan.
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DR. R. E. Froude, C.B., F.R.S.. Nature 113, 501 (1924). https://doi.org/10.1038/113501a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/113501a0