The first recorded grant of a patent for exclusive rights to an invention went in 1421 to someone in Venice, for a boat he'd adapted for transporting marble. I’ve pursued patents since the early 1980s, not least because at the time the Science Reference library still existed in London: with its vast archive of historical patent documents in the form of printed volumes and microfiche. Entrance was free, requiring no pass of the sort required for instance by the British Library nowadays.
Most of what I designed at the time and since relates to different forms of transport, with a special interest in anything that flys or floats. I guess this reflects aspirations divided between the merchant navy and some form of flying. Ultimately, as is often the case with inventors and misfits, I never viewed myself as succeeding in either ~ though like me the many thousands of passengers I flew walked away unscathed.
My specific interest though always lay in the transition zone between water and air, which is considered ground-effect but which has been modified as ‘surface effect’ in order to encapsulate flight over water too. The library I referred to also at the time featured volumes of an annual called Janes Surface Skimmers, whose editor I spoke to occasionally and which covered emerging craft that were not quite boat or 'plane.
Sadly the annual would be discontinued, its entries subsumed back into the realm of regular shipping. This would be, I think, because the fantastic beasts that littered its pages either (a) ran short of funding (b) came to grief or (c) were simply ahead of a time that would see remarkable advances in electrical equipment, battery-packs and computing power. Principally if you overlooked hovercraft, the primary exponents of flight just above the water were invariably German, Italian or Russian.
The patent itself touches upon all of these issues, having been built and expensively tested at large scale, having failed that test upon water, and having been conducted at a time that confined experimentation to unwieldy forms of engine: worth recalling here that the aeroplane resulted from a shift from external to internal combustion.
Considering (b) however and discounting the largest-scale efforts of the Russians, wing-in-ground effect or WIGs generally suffered catastrophic loss in ways that had afflicted seaplanes like the Catalina: flight requires the widest span, whilst speed on water requires the narrowest. And the principal problem at that time, comparing to now, is that prototyping was considerably more expensive and loss of the prototype would generally terminate the project as well as the airframe.
Effectively this confined surface-effect craft to inland waterways, or at least 'til now, when sensors and processing power enable aircraft like Regent’s Seaglider to fly at infinitely adjustable height above waves, whether supported by hydrofoils or wings within ground-effect.
None of what went before nor what is advanced nowadays, however, addresses the issues raised in the patent in their entirety i.e. a simple watercraft that can translate from travel on water to flight above it, at high speed without fear of destruction.
For it remains the case that many such designs are unreliable except on the calmest seas. To a great extent the limitation still extends to hydrofoils, unless on the scale seen in challenges like the Americas Cup: which isn't cheap. As witness to all forms of transport, too, I recall how in all of those places where ferries ran on hydrofoils ~ Italy, Greece, Hong Kong and Russia ~ they were all withdrawn. This was principally because of the debris that litters harbours in particular, and the damage it would do regularly to hydrofoil surfaces. Yes, foils work nicely on videos and a turquoise sea, but life is not nearly so predictable.
There it is then: a design able to transition from high-speed on water to occasional flight above it when seas are smooth; lighter and more efficient than a conventional craft; easily built and requiring a minimum of both labour and exotic material... and which is finally suited to autonomous operation, or first-person-viewing from within the comfort of your living-room...
... whilst holding out the prospect of fitting a seat, and speeding off into the sunset.
