Many strange new means of transport have been developed in our century, the strangest of them being perhaps the hovercraft. In 1953, a former electronics engineer in his fifties, Christopher Cockerell, who had turned to boat-building on the Norfolk Broads, suggested an idea on which he had been working for many years to the British Government and industrial circles. (1)_______________________. Ever since, people have had difficulty in deciding whether the craft should be ranged among ships, planes, or land vehicles--for it is something in between a boat and an aircraft. (2)_______________________. His answer was to lift the vessel out of the water by making it ride on a cushion of air, no more than one or two feet thick.
