Word: whitcomb
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Rules for Riots. Tactics in other states range from mere admonition to measures of sharp severity. Indiana's legislature passed no new laws, but Governor Edgar D. Whitcomb officially reminded trustees in the state university system that they may be replaced if they do not back up the Governor's "respectful demand" for absolute compliance with existing laws...
Aeronautical Engineer Richard Whitcomb literally changed the shape of modern aviation when he designed the "Coke bottle" fuselage - a narrow-waisted plane body that helps high-speed jets to slip through the sound barrier into supersonic flight. Now, 18 years later, Whitcomb has done it again. He has de veloped a radically new wing that will allow subsonic jets to fly faster, more smoothly and more efficiently...
Ample Incentive. Both the airlines and the military have long been anxious to fly faster in their subsonic jets. So there was ample incentive four years ago for Whitcomb and a team of NASA engineers at the Langley Research Center in Virginia to turn from the investigation of supersonic wing design to the problem of subsonic turbulence...
...efforts to reduce turbulence, Whitcomb finally hit upon the design for what NASA now calls the "supercritical wing." To reduce the peak airflow speed and move the shock wave farther back on the wing, he drastically flattened the curvature of the upper wing surface. To compensate for the loss of lift that resulted, he increased the curvature near the wing's trailing edge and put a concave contour on the underside. "Some people think that I merely turned the wing upside down," Whitcomb says...
Elated by the results, NASA has ordered the construction of a flight-test version of Whitcomb's wing. At Edwards Air Force Base in California, the wing will be mounted on a modified F-8 jet-fighter and will undergo test flights in the summer of 1970. If the performance measured in Langley's wind tunnel is duplicated in flight, a new generation of more efficient subsonic jets may soon be cruising major U.S. air routes at speeds as high as 645 m.p.h...