* Power prospects
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Can anyone, I wonder, claim equally wide and practical gas turbine engineering experience as that possessed by Ivan M. Swatman who, as announced in this issue, is presenting one of the papers at CM's conference in September? St. Albans-born Mr. Swatman served a general engineering apprenticeship before joining Napier at Acton, where he worked on several experimental turbine engines, including the Nomad—a turbocompound type. When he went to the USA after the war, it was as project engineer on 5,000 h.p. industrial turbines with the Flader Co., and after three years he took a similar job with the Solar Aircraft Co., in San Diego.
He was made principal gas turbine engineer when he joined Ford at Dearborn in 1956 and he has been responsible for the design of all Ford gas turbine engines since then. These include the 600 b.h.p. model which powered the experimental "Big Red" futuristic highway truck and the 375 b.h.p. research prototype designed for a normal Ford W1000 truck.
If US Ford's announced intentions come to fruition, they'll be selling turbine trucks to operators in the early 1970s. But I expect we'll be hearing more about that at the Hilton on September 19, won't we?