World War II
Ricardo’s work on the sleeve valve affected the development of British aircraft engines in the thirties and during the war. He even enhanced the famous Rolls-Royce Merlin engine in the Mosquito by giving it an oxygen enrichment system to improve its performance.
Ricardo's work exerted influence all around the world. While his work guaranteed England a supply of fuels of ever-increasing power during the 1930s, it also helped Germany to develop synthetic high-octane aviation fuel, for example for the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 which inflicted heavy losses among the RAF's Supermarine Spitfires in 1942. Likewise, Ricardo's research on the detonation-inhibiting qualities of water injection was exploited by German engineers (MW 50) to provide their aero-engines with a particularly powerful special emergency power rating.
During 1941-5 Ricardo was a member of the War Cabinet engineering advisory committee.
Ricardo also assisted in the design of the combustion chambers and fuel control system of Sir Frank Whittle’s jet engine.
Read more about this topic: Harry Ricardo
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“The base of all artistic genius is the power of conceiving humanity in a new, striking, rejoicing way, of putting a happy world of its own creation in place of the meaner world of common days, of generating around itself an atmosphere with a novel power of refraction, selecting, transforming, recombining the images it transmits, according to the choice of the imaginative intellect. In exercising this power, painting and poetry have a choice of subject almost unlimited.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone
In the ranks of death you’ll find him,
His father’s sword he has girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him.”
—Thomas Moore (1779–1852)