World Speed Record Use
New airspeed records were set after the 1929 and 1931 Schneider Trophy contests, both achieved using the R engine. In the two decades before World War II, the quest to break the land speed record was hotly contested, particularly so in the early 1930s. Aero engines were often used to power wheeled vehicles to ever-higher speeds, chosen because of their high power-to-weight ratios: the Liberty engine, Napier Lion and the Sunbeam Matabele were among the engine types used in the 1920s. The Rolls-Royce R was the latest development in high-powered aero engine design at the time, and was chosen by several makers of land speed record-contending cars; the engine was also chosen for powerboats attempting the water speed record. One car and two boats successfully used the combined power of two R engines.
Read more about this topic: Rolls-Royce R
Famous quotes containing the words world, speed and/or record:
“The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“It was undoubtedly the feeling of exile—that sensation of a void within which never left us, that irrational longing to hark back to the past or else to speed up the march of time, and those keen shafts of memory that stung like fire.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The case of Andrews is really a very bad one, as appears by the record already before me. Yet before receiving this I had ordered his punishment commuted to imprisonment ... and had so telegraphed. I did this, not on any merit in the case, but because I am trying to evade the butchering business lately.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)