Everyone remembers the Wright brothers, who made the first powered, heavier-than-air flights by human beings on a beach in North Carolina in 1903. Few, by contrast, remember Charlie Taylor, a mechanic at the brothers’ bicycle business in Dayton, Ohio. Yet it was Taylor who, by building an internal-combustion engine out of aluminium castings rather than iron ones, created a device both light enough and powerful enough to lift Orville and Wilbur into the sky.
Engine design has always been crucial to aviation. To start with, more powerful versions of the piston-driven motor pioneered by Taylor ruled the roost. Then, a radical, new approach emerged as the designs of Frank Whittle, a British engineer, ushered in the jet age. The jet has since evolved into the turbofan, whose gaping intakes have—as seasoned air travellers will have noticed—grown larger and larger over the years, to accommodate ever bigger and better fans. And now, as 2015 turns into 2016, another new design is being rolled out. This is the geared turbofan, which is available as an option on the A320neo, the latest product of Airbus, Europe’s biggest aerospace group.
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