Edward Robert Armstrong was a Canadian born engineer and inventor who in 1927 proposed a series of "seadrome" floating airport platforms for airplanes to land on and refuel for transatlantic flights. While his original concept was made obsolete by long-range aircraft that did not need such refueling points, the idea of an anchored deep-sea platform was later applied to use for floating oil rigs.

Early career

He was born in 1876 in Guelph

Guelph

Guelph is a city in Ontario, Canada.Guelph may also refer to:* Guelph , consisting of the City of Guelph, Ontario* Guelph , as the above* University of Guelph, in the same city...

, Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

, and he moved to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and worked in Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

 in the early 1900s, developing oil-well-drilling machinery. In 1909 he went to St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

 as an automotive and aviation engineer, and in 1916 he went to DuPont

DuPont

E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company , commonly referred to as DuPont, is an American chemical company that was founded in July 1802 as a gunpowder mill by Eleuthère Irénée du Pont. DuPont was the world's third largest chemical company based on market capitalization and ninth based on revenue in 2009...

 to work on the construction of their nitrocellulose

Nitrocellulose

Nitrocellulose is a highly flammable compound formed by nitrating cellulose through exposure to nitric acid or another powerful nitrating agent. When used as a propellant or low-order explosive, it is also known as guncotton...

 plant in Hopewell, Virginia

Hopewell, Virginia

Hopewell is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The population was 22,591 at the 2010 Census . It is in Tri-Cities area of the Richmond-Petersburg region and is a portion of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area...

. He was then promoted to chief of the plant’s mechanical research department. In 1924 he quit DuPont

DuPont

E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company , commonly referred to as DuPont, is an American chemical company that was founded in July 1802 as a gunpowder mill by Eleuthère Irénée du Pont. DuPont was the world's third largest chemical company based on market capitalization and ninth based on revenue in 2009...

 to work fulltime on his "seadrome" project. In 1926 he incorporated the "Armstrong Seadrome Development Company", of Wilmington, Delaware

Wilmington, Delaware

Wilmington is the largest city in the state of Delaware, United States, and is located at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine Creek, near where the Christina flows into the Delaware River. It is the county seat of New Castle County and one of the major cities in the Delaware Valley...

.

Seadrome

A seadrome was to be a floating steel landing strip, the size of an aircraft carrier

Aircraft carrier

An aircraft carrier is a warship designed with a primary mission of deploying and recovering aircraft, acting as a seagoing airbase. Aircraft carriers thus allow a naval force to project air power worldwide without having to depend on local bases for staging aircraft operations...

, anchored to the ocean floor by steel cables. It would rise 70 feet (21.3 m) or more above the surface of the ocean by tubular columns that would allow waves to pass underneath. The columns would terminate in ballast tanks 100 feet (30.5 m) below the surface. The runway platform would provide a 1200 feet (365.8 m) runway by 200 feet (61 m) wide with extended midsides to allow for a hotel, restaurant, and other facilities. The plan was to position a series of seadromes across the Atlantic Ocean about 350 miles (563.3 km) apart to allow for refueling of airplanes. He had been thinking of the idea as early as 1913. In 1915 he completed the first design, and in 1922 he built a 1/300 scale model. In 1926 he performed a test that he filmed, with scale models of his seadrome and the ocean liner Majestic in a tank of water. He used a fan to create the equivalent of 40 feet (12.2 m) waves, and the seadrome was stable. In 1927 when the Lindbergh

Charles Lindbergh

Charles Augustus Lindbergh was an American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist.Lindbergh, a 25-year-old U.S...

 and other transatlantic flight

Transatlantic flight

Transatlantic flight is the flight of an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean. A transatlantic flight may proceed east-to-west, originating in Europe or Africa and terminating in North America or South America, or it may go in the reverse direction, west-to-east...

s were made, newspapers started running stories of his concept. He had financial backing until The Depression of the 1930s. The last time he made the proposal was in 1943, during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. By that time long range aircraft had already been designed for the war effort, and aircraft carriers were already in use.

During the years following the depression, Mr Armstrong made a number of rebids for the program and eventually the project was downsized from eight to five seadromes as planes became more advanced. By WWII, the advent of long range passenger flight made the concept obsolete. However, Mr Armstong's efforts with DuPont and Sun Ship Building, owned by Sun Oil, led his ideas and basic designs to be used by the oil industry to create the Semi-submersible

Semi-submersible

A semi-submersible is a specialised marine vessel with good stability and seakeeping characteristics. The semi-submersible vessel design is commonly used in a number of specific offshore roles such as for offshore drilling rigs, safety vessels, oil production platforms and heavy lift cranes.The...

 off shore oil rig.

Time magazine wrote on November 27, 1933:

Publications

• Edward Robert Armstrong; America-Europe via North Atlantic airways over the Armstrong seadrome system of commercial ocean transit by airplane (1927)
• Edward Robert Armstrong; The seadrome project for transatlantic airways (1943)
• Leonard H. Quick; Seadrome: phase 1 report

External links

• Edward Armstrong bibliography
• Armstrong's Floating Airports: Innovation in History
• American Heritage: Edward Armstrong
• Aeronautics: Sea Chain, Time Magazine, November 27, 1933
• Seadrome, History Detectives
  History Detectives
  History Detectives is a documentary television series on PBS. A group of researchers help people to seek answers to various historical questions they have, usually centering around a family heirloom, an old house or other historic object or structure...
  
  , season 7, episode 10, 30 August 2009
• "Floating Airports", Modern Mechanix, February 1934
• "Uncle Sam asked to build Floating Ocean Airports", Popular Science
  Popular Science
  Popular Science is an American monthly magazine founded in 1872 carrying articles for the general reader on science and technology subjects. Popular Science has won over 58 awards, including the ASME awards for its journalistic excellence in both 2003 and 2004...
  
  , February 1934 (archived at modernmechanix.com)