Wallace Rupert Turnbull

Wallace Turnbull was born in Saint John and studied engineering at Cornell, Heidelberg and Berlin. In 1901 he established himself as a consulting engineer in Rothesay, where he built the first wind tunnel in Canada and began the experiments which made him a leading aerodynamic theorist. He is principally noted for the development of a controllable variable pitch airscrew, which permits adjustment of the propeller to suit each stage of the flight, and for which he received the first Canadian patent in 1922. The propeller was successfully used in flight at Camp Borden, Ontario, in 1927.

Wallace Turnbull est né a Saint-Jean (N.-B.) et a étudié le génie à Cornell, Heidelberg et Berlin. En 1901, il s’est établi à Rothesay comme ingénieur-conseil. Il y construisit la première soufflerie au Canada et commença les expériences qui firent de lui un théoricien de l’aérodynamique d’avant-garde. Sa renommée tient surtout à son hélice à pas variable, ce qui permet d’ajuster l’hélice en vol selon les exigences du trajet, pour laquelle il obtint le premier brevet canadien en 1922. L’hélice servit à un premier vol à Camp Borden (Ontario) en 1927.