This is a specially produced bookplate created on sepia recycled card approx 20x14cm in size. It features an original pencil portrait drawing of Frank Whittle by Steve Teasdale. The genuine signature of Sir Frank Whittle has been professionally mounted underneath the drawing. This is a historic signature.
Whittle obtained his first patent for a turbo-jet engine in 1930, and in 1936 he joined with associates to found a company called Power Jets Ltd. He tested his first jet engine on the ground in 1937. This event is customarily regarded as the invention of the jet engine, but the first operational jet engine was designed in Germany by Hans Pabst von Ohain and powered the first jet-aircraft flight on August 27, 1939. The outbreak of World War II finally spurred the British government into supporting Whittle’s development work. A jet engine of his invention was fitted to a specially built Gloster E.28/39 airframe, and the plane’s maiden flight took place on May 15, 1941. The British government took over Power Jets Ltd. in 1944, by which time Britain’s Gloster Meteor jet aircraft were in service with the RAF, intercepting German V-1 rockets.
Whittle retired from the RAF in 1948 with the rank of air commodore, and that same year he was knighted