Hovercraft

A hovercraft is an amphibious craft able to travel over land, water, mud, ice and other surfaces, held aloft on a cushion of air that blowers force beneath the hull at slightly above atmospheric pressure, with the air escaping through slots or holes around the edge of its disk- or oval-shaped platform. The British mechanical engineer Christopher Cockerell is credited with the modern hovercraft: his team was the first to use a ring of air to maintain the cushion, the first to develop a workable flexible skirt, and the first to demonstrate a practical vehicle in sustained use, building his experimental models in the early 1950s. His SR.N1 prototype made its first hover on June 11, 1959, and crossed the English Channel just weeks later, on July 25, 1959.