Rocket PoweR, InteRstellaR tRavel and eteRnal lIfe

camshaft, no valves, and no connecting rods, the pistons
were mounted directly on the crankshaft. Lathers
said he saw a model of the engine in 1935 or 1936. 173
One wonders if Lathers after the passage of forty-five
years might actually have seen a model of the rotary
engine patented by the Hungerford brothers and Amos
Newlands. Or, more likely, perhaps he saw the smaller,
four-piston rotary which appears to be encased in a box,
actually a frame.
Peg Gallagher said Lathers told her he remembered a
science instructor and Hungerford discussing an
“unusual aircraft engine that Daniel told him the federal
government had given him $10,000 to develop.”
Lather recalled,
He took me to his barn and he claimed to have collected
one of every kind of aircraft engine in the
world. And, in a box, you couldn’t see much that
looked like an engine, but supposedly it was one of
their prototypes and he did tell me he got $10,000
from the federal government for it.
Lathers said he couldn’t substantiate Hungerford’s
claims, which he says, “may have been inflated.”
Neither, however, can he dismiss them. He remembers
Dan’s description of the engine. “It was not a turbo type
like your jet engines of today. But he claimed he could
develop a flame – which was apparently true today –
that was as hard as a bar of steel.” Lathers said.
“I don’t know…that’s quite a statement. But on the
other hand, a jet engine when it takes off is nothing
more than a column of air which is under high compression.
He was essentially doing the same thing with
his little rocket.” 174 One wonders if Lathers at the end
was talking about Hungerford’s “electro-magnetic
space drive” mechanism described in chapter seven of
this book.
In an excerpt from a conversation about Chemung
County aviation history, someone named Crandall
spoke of the Hungerford rotary engine.
Crandall —- I remember, in his backyard, for a long
time, I was called to take a picture of a new engine
that he had created. He had reversed the old radial
engine which had all the connecting rods meeting
in the middle out of a central crankshaft and he had
the pistons going outward. The entire outside of
the engine was the crankcase. His idea was that the
centrifugal force, when this thing turned around,
would keep the oil in that area and the connecting
rods instead of being flexible in connection with the
pistons, were rigidly set, and at the ends, they had
little rollers that climbed on an inclined plane at
about seven different angles that went around in
the middle of this crankcase. Do you remember
that?
Griswold —- No, but I know that he had a lot of
ideas.
Crandall—-Of course, it was an idea that didn’t
work because it was too doggone heavy. 175
Patent attorney George L. Wheelock in 1942 wrote to
Daniel Hungerford, Floyd Hungerford, and Amos
Newlands asking if the men might wish to acquire their
original letters patent, #1,853,563, since Wheeler was
closing his office in Manhattan. Daniel Hungerford
responded by sending postage stamps to Wheeler to
mail the documents. Wheelock answered, “As you
write to me that you may have some new work for me
in the near future, I will send you my new address in
California, if you wish to do business with me out
there.” 176 The writer knows of no further correspondence
with Wheelock.
Figure 23. This photograph of a five-cylinder engine shows the
Hungerfords posing with the parts before assembly.
Chapter Two: Hungerford Inventions 43