Design and Development
The original design by Socrates H. Capelis was issued U.S. patent #1,745,600 in 1930. The patent comprised a modified application with a half-span dorsal wing mounted rearward, and on top of the cabin with two additional engines mounted on the wings. The project was funded by local Greek restaurateurs as a promotional aircraft, and constructed with help from University of California students.
A less radical design by Dr. John E. Younger featured all-metal construction, and was built as an all-metal low-wing, retractable gear twin engine airliner with a triple vertical stabilizer supporting a dual (biplane arrangement) horizontal stabilizer. The wing used a large box-spar construction with corrugated skin panels. The partly retracting gear, extended automatically when the throttle was closed.
Following a 1938 incident, the XC-12 was modified at Glendale, California. The forward slanting eight-piece windshield was modified to a four piece that slanted rearward, and the passenger windows were squared off to look more like a Douglas DC-3.
Read more about this topic: Capelis XC-12
Famous quotes containing the words design and/or development:
“Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a more calculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“As a final instance of the force of limitations in the development of concentration, I must mention that beautiful creature, Helen Keller, whom I have known for these many years. I am filled with wonder of her knowledge, acquired because shut out from all distraction. If I could have been deaf, dumb, and blind I also might have arrived at something.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)