Transport: Full Feathering

By changing the design of its propellers (deepening the pitch and adding a fourth blade), the S. S. Normandie last month recaptured the Atlantic speed record (TIME, Aug. 16). Even more striking are the results that have been attained in the last four years by changing the design of airplane propellers. Until 1933 there had been only two major improvements in the paper airscrew invented by Leonardo da Vinci some 450 years before to pull toy helicopters to the ceiling of his study. One was the Wright Brothers' development of a two-bladed '"prop" of...

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