Edward Robert Armstrong (1876-1955)

Edward Robert Armstrong (c 1880-1955) was an inventor who in 1927 proposed a series of "seadromes" for airplanes to land on, for transatlantic transportation.


 * New York Times; June 17, 1927; A project to establish floating islands in the open ocean, at conveniently spaced intervals, and to organize a regular air transport service between Europe and America was explained by Edward R. Armstrong, research engineer and inventor of the seadrome, ...
 * New York Times; July 28, 1927; Will Test Seadrome This Winter.
 * New York Times; April 12, 1928; A company to build the Armstrong seadrome, which has been designed for use as an intermediate landing place on passenger flights over the ocean, has been formed, according to E.R. Armstrong, engineer of the Du Pont Company of Delaware. The ...
 * New York Times; February 26, 1929; Actual construction on the first Armstrong seadrome, a deep-sea landing platform for airplanes, on the success of which its designer, Edward R. Armstrong, bases his hopes for transatlantic flying, will probably be started in August of this year ...
 * New York Times; February 27, 1929; Edward R. Armstrong, the inventor of the seadrome which it is proposed to build between New York and Bermuda for the purpose of establishing a daily airplane service, returned ...
 * New York Times; March 1, 1929; Edward R. Armstrong, inventor of seadromes, which he plans to place in a series across the Atlantic Ocean for regular air lines from continent to continent, returned yesterday from Bermuda, where he made arrangements to establish facilities for a radio ...
 * New York Times; June 29, 1929; Charts Seadrome Site.
 * New York Times; August 14, 1929; Work will be started in September on the Armstrong seadrome, the ocean flying-field designed by Edward R. Armstrong of Wilmington, Del., an engineer of the du Pont de Nemours Company, it was announced yesterday ...
 * New York Times; October 16, 1929; Seadrome Model Gets Tests Today; Thirty-Five-Foot Steel Bulk On Lines Of Future Structures Launched In Maryland. Building Plans Complete First Full Drome To Be Put In Ocean For New York-Bermuda Airline Next Summer. Launched During Storm. Tests To Occupy Few Weeks. Cambridge, Maryland, October 15, 1929. An experimental model of the giant seadromes, which may soon form the mid-ocean landing field for a transatlantic passenger airline, was launched here today by its inventor, Edward R. Armstrong of Hollyoak, Delaware.
 * New York Times; October 23, 1929; Work will be started within two months on the first floating landing field for use on ocean airways. It is the invention of Edward H. Armstrong, head of the Armstrong Seadrome Development. Corporation. Work On Seadrome To Begin In 60 Days; Armstrong Company Will Have First Ocean Landing Field In Place Next Year. Model Proves A Success 29,000-Ton Structure 1,100 Feet Long Will Be Anchored 350 Miles Off New York.
 * Time magazine; October 28, 1929; Seadrome. Although rain was beating down on Cambridge, Maryland, last week, men enthusiastically lugged into the Choptank River a one-ton steel model of the steel islands (seadromes) which Edward R. Armstrong of Holly Oak, Delaware, proposes to anchor 375 miles apart across the Atlantic. The model, 1/32 the size of intended seadromes, consists essentially of a rectangular platform. To its underside are attached hollow steel columns, each ending in a circular disk. Air in the cylinders was sufficient to keep the device floating on the Choptank and the platform several feet above the water. Speedboats dashed around the model. Their waves did not touch the platform nor did they rock it. The heavy horizontal disks at the lower ends of the hollow columns, below the depths to which the wave actions reached, counterbalanced all surface disturbances. No surprise was his model's success to Mr. Armstrong, swarthy engineer, who since he left the Navy has been consulting engineer for the E. I. duPont de Nemours & Co. at Wilmington. For 16 years he has been experimenting and designing such a sea base having in mind ocean way stations for ships and, more lately for transoceanic aircraft. He "sold" his idea to the eminently practical duPont and General Motors financiers. They have provided him one and three quarters million dollars to build his first seadrome. Construction has already started on it. It will be called the Langley after the late Samuel Pierpont Langley, designer of the plane which, except for accidents, might have flown before the Wrights' plane did in 1903. The Langley will have an unobstructed airplane runway 1,200 ft. long by 200 ft. wide. At the mid-sides the platform will project to give room for a hotel (with restaurant and bar), hangars, storage sheds, weather bureau, offices, hospital wards, lighthouse. Platform and buildings will be 80 ft. above calm water level. Because no Atlantic waves have ever been seen more than 45 ft. high, it is improbable that the runway ever will be awash. The buoyancy columns with their stabilizing disks will reach 160 ft. below water level. That is considerably deeper than any wave action has ever been noted. Mr. Armstrong has long planned to anchor his first full-size seadrome midway between Manhattan and Bermuda. Studying hydrographic charts of the region he figured that there must exist a high spot on the ocean floor about where he would like it. He asked Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams to send a survey ship to check his calculations. He was right. The survey showed a little plateau just 400 miles from Manhattan and 375 miles from Bermuda, in an almost direct line. It is six miles long by four miles wide and only two miles below sea level, whereas the surrounding ocean is three to four miles deep. The difference in depth means thousands of dollars of savings to Mr. Armstrong and his financiers on the 3½ inch steel cable he is having laid to hold his floating island to its anchors. Those anchors are to be huge round bobbins which will dig into red clay of the submerged plateau and hold the seadrome from drifting. By next fall and before Bermuda's 1930-1931 tourist season begins Mr. Armstrong expects to have the Langley completed and anchored in place, ready to receive tourist planes and to entertain travelers on man's newest conquest of an element. As the operation of the Langley makes money, he will (and he has the money in provision to do so) construct eight similar seadromes to be strung 375 miles apart between the 35th and 40th parallels, north latitude, between Long Island and Plymouth. The 375 miles is an easy jump for any plane. Hence the project presages safe and convenient airplane passage across the ocean, direct competition with both sea ships and air ships. Flying time between the continents, Mr. Armstrong calculates, will be as low as 20 hours.
 * New York Times; November 15, 1929; To Set Up Seadrome On Bermuda Line Soon; Armstrong, Inventor, Announces Plan To Open Service From Here This Fall.
 * Time magazine; November 18, 1929; ... The latest quirk in the problem cropped up last week in Paris when French Senator Henry de Mery arose to comment on the proposed. duPont-financed seadromes of Inventor Edward R. Armstrong (TIME. Oct. 28). Senator de Mery urged the French delegation to the London parley to bring up this matter in connection with U. S. naval strength, warning that otherwise "just outside our territorial waters we will someday likely see islands appear flying the Star-Spangled Banner."
 * New York Times; May 23, 1930; Plans for constructing the Armstrong seadrome, a floating airport to be anchored 375 miles off New York on the direct route to Bermuda, were discussed yesterday at a meeting of engineers and builders and their representatives in the offices of Browns
 * New York Times; August 14, 1930; In ten years or less the large transatlantic steamship companies will be faced with the necessity of scrapping hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of their high-speed ships because of the competition of transatlantic aircraft lines, in the opinion of E ...
 * New York Times; September 7, 1930; Predicts Wide Seadrome Use; Inventor Believes Heavy Air Traffic Will Make Use of Landing Fields at Sea When First Has Proved Its Practical Worth Has Faith in Tests. Big Revenue Estimated. With the Atlantis spanned by airplanes twice in a month in a westerly direction; by Coste and Bellonte in their unbroken flight last week and by von Gronau and his companions late in August by stages over the northern route, the problem ...
 * New York Times; April 12, 1931; Seadrome Sovereignty; Twenty-Two Nations Lay Down Rules For Floating Landing Fields Although Only Project Is American. The question of sovereignty over airports on the high seas and whether they should come under the jurisdiction of the League of Nations was discussed at a recent meeting of the International Aeronautical Juridical Congress at ...
 * New York Times; March 20, 1932; Amid the plans for transatlantic airplane lines, to use either the northern islands and Canada or the Bermuda-Azores route involving longer water jumps but more clement weather conditions, which are publicly discussed from time to time, studies involving
 * New York Times; November 17, 1933; Washington, November 16, 1933. A difference of opinion within the administration over government financing of transatlantic seadrome experiments developed today in the denial by Secretary Ickes that $1,500,000 had been allocated by the Public Works Administratio...
 * New York Times; November 19, 1933; It is twenty years since Edward R. Armstrong, du Pont engineer, first set to work on his scheme for a string of floating airports across the Atlantic. He has worked carefully and painstakingly, has checked his own figures against those of the best naval
 * Time magazine; November 27, 1933; Sea Chain. A perennial gift to Sunday feature editors for the last five years has been the Armstrong Seadrome, vividly imaginative project for a chain of floating airports across the Atlantic. The perfect publicity subject, it offered serious readers masses of data on construction of huge platforms, stabilized high above the waves by means of weighted pillars, on problems of anchorage, navigation, operation, economics. For gumchewers there were exciting pictures of a seadrome at night, in midocean position, with flags flying, floodlights blazing, beacons stabbing the dark sky, gorgeous express planes gliding down to safe landings. Even the windows of the drome's elegant hotel underlying the deck were pricked out with cozy lights. Last week the Armstrong Seadrome leaped out of its accustomed setting in the feature supplements to land on page one of the nation's press when the Federal Government indicated that it was ready to help finance the project, that it might even build and operate the whole system itself. Money. For weeks Inventor Edward R. Armstrong & backers have been trying to borrow $30,000,000 from Public Works Administration to build five seadromes and string them out to Spain by way of the Azores. Aside from obvious national advantages to the U. S. the application cited such claims as: Construction and installation jobs would employ 10,000 men for two years. Required would be 125.000 tons of steel, five miles of anchor chain, 45 miles of cable, five 1,500-ton anchors, large quantities of electric equipment, radio apparatus, beacons, pipe, fittings, etc., etc. Airline operators would order $10,000,000 worth of new planes for trans-atlantic service as soon as work was begun on the dromes. Yearly operating cost of the five dromes, including overhead: $2,250,000. Yearly income after the fifth year would total $11.418,000, to be derived as follows: mail, $6,000,000; express, $105,000; passengers, $4,538,000; hotels, shops, concessions, hangar space, fuel & oil, $775.000. The system would collect $70 from each transatlantic fare (estimated at $350), $25 from each traveller to Bermuda, $10 from each week-end drome visitor. At first Inventor Armstrong hoped to finance his scheme with private capital. The du Fonts, for whom he used to work as a consulting engineer, helped him in his early researches. He expected substantial backing also from General Motors until Depression upset his plans. Last March he organized Seadrome Ocean Dock Corp., with himself as president and majority stockholder. His backers include GM's Board Chairman Lammot du Pont and President John Howard Pew of Sun Oil Company.
 * New York Times; May 14, 1943; Man-Made Atlantic Islands. Man-made steel islands stretching across the Atlantic, each complete with a hotel, repair shop, radio station, fuel tanks, storage rooms and other necessaries of aerial transport -- newspaper readers must have rubbed their eyes and asked questions when they read the advertisement yesterday in which Edward R. Armstrong's seadrome was described.