Background
Hovgaard was born in Aarhus, Denmark in 1857, the second son of Ole Anton Hovgaard and Louise Charlotte (Munch) Hovgaard. His father, scholar, teacher, and historian, taught in the government-operated Aarhus Cathedral School.
(Notes Extracted From Letters Written By George E. Russell...)
Notes Extracted From Letters Written By George E. Russell And W. Watters Pagon.
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(Excerpt from The Voyages of the Norsemen to America Some...)
Excerpt from The Voyages of the Norsemen to America Some may judge that I have gone beyond my ca pacity as a naval man, for I have indeed trespassed on the territory of the historian, the ethnologist, and the botanist. It will perhaps be admitted, however, that after specialists have performed the technical task of bringing together and presenting the facts that bear on vexed questions, a verdict can well be given by a layman, provided it is based on a careful study of the available material. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Excerpt from Structural Design of Warships This work is based on a series of lectures prepared for a course in Naval Construction which was established by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1901 for officers of the United States Navy detailed to take this course in preparation for the duties as Naval Constructors. The lectures have been developed during the last thirteen years and, having now taken a fairly permanent form, it was' thought desirable to print them, partly for reasons of instruction, and partly in the hope that they might be useful to naval constructors and designers of warships in general. The course in Naval Construction extends over three years and consists of lectures and design work. The general plan of the lectures will be here briefly outlined in order to show the place which the present work occupies in the course. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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(Excerpt from Submarine Boats Great efforts are being mad...)
Excerpt from Submarine Boats Great efforts are being made to devise a type of machinery that can be used both on the surface and submerged and especially one by which the propulsion under water does not entail any extra weight. But no satisfactory solution has yet been obtained. Any prams based on combustion involves the storage of atmospheric air or oxygen. But a storage of these gases in sufficient quantities for underwater propulsion requires excessive weight and space. The discharge of the products of combustion is liable to reveal the presence of the boat. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Hovgaard was born in Aarhus, Denmark in 1857, the second son of Ole Anton Hovgaard and Louise Charlotte (Munch) Hovgaard. His father, scholar, teacher, and historian, taught in the government-operated Aarhus Cathedral School.
William entered Aarhus Cathedral School on graduation from grammar school in 1868. He began his studies in the arts and humanities, but did not do well and transferred to mathematics and physical science, where he excelled.
William's older brother, a navy officer and an explorer, was a member of the 1878-1879 Nordenskjold expedition of discovery and navigation of the Northeast Passage to the Pacific. Perhaps influenced by his brother, William entered the Danish Naval Academy at Copenhagen. He did so well there that he won the Gerner Medal, awarded for excellence in scientific studies.
After graduation from the academy in 1879, Hovgaard served as a sub-lieutenant until 1880 when he became a first lieutenant. In 1883 he was enrolled in a three-year course in naval architecture and ship construction at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, England. At that time, the United States Navy also assigned two young graduates of the United States Naval Academy to each class at the Royal Naval College in preparation for careers in the Construction Corps. Hovgaard's classmate, David W. Taylor, CC, USN (later rear admiral), had a profound influence on Hovgaard's career in 1901. Still later, Hovgaard acknowledged the influence of two of his teachers, Sir W. E. Smith and W. H. Whiting, in the preface to his influential textbook General Design of Warships (1920).
Hovgaard's first assignment after completion of the course at Greenwich in 1886 was at the Royal Dockyard in Copenhagen. Among other duties, he served as an instructor at the school in the dockyard. In 1895, he was named general manager of the Burmeister and Wain Shipyard in Copenhagen, a position he held for two years.
Hovgaard returned to the Royal Dockyard in 1898. By 1901, Hovgaard had completed the design studies for a submarine and in that year he was sent to the United States to study submarines. While there, he was persuaded by Secretary of the Navy John D. Long, Chief Constructor Rear Admiral Taylor (his former classmate), and Cecil Hobart Peabody, chairman of the department of naval architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to accept an appointment at M. I. T. as a professor of naval design and construction in charge of a new three-year course for naval constructors. Hovgaard began his lectures in January 1902 after a brief return to Europe to survey the schools there.
He reported his proposal to meet the challenge of technical education for naval design in a recorded discussion in the paper "Technical Training for Shipbuilders, " delivered by the fifth president of M. I. T. , Dr. H. S. Pritchett, at the general meeting of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME) in November 1902. While lectures in theoretical naval architecture were given by Peabody, Hovgaard assigned to himself three parts of the course: design practice, lectures, and shipyard visits. The nature of Hovgaard's lectures, together with the design practice, introduced a nourishing environment for learning and practice in creative warship design.
Hovgaard classified his lectures into three types: historical developments, theory of design, and structural and internal arrangements. They provided the basis for his three textbooks, which later became standard works. Hovgaard's lectures on structural design were the basis of his text Structural Design of Warships, published in 1915 in London. This text so endured that a complete revision was published twenty-five years later in the United States under the supervision of the author. In the tradition of master builders and architects, Hovgaard maintained his principal technical concentration in the structural arrangement and soundness of the constructions he conceived and designed.
The lectures on theory of design developed into Hovgaard's text General Design of Warships, published in 1920. His purpose here was at a higher level of generality, of a broader scope, than that of his book on structural design. He arranged and described the major steps and underlying principles, always with facts and data from experience, in the general and overall design of warships. Structural arrangement was his subspecialty within his exposition of general arrangement.
His lectures on historical development were to general design as the latter were to structural design. Modern History of Warships was published in 1920. The manuscript, completed in 1916, suffered from long publication delays due to labor conditions and revisions to include wartime developments and previously unpublished facts, but the historical review transcended a compilation of names, numbers, and dates of ship programs. The descriptive material was intended to be the basic data from construction programs necessary for comprehension of the nature and causes of warship development. His record and analysis of the evolution of warship design was a deliberate intellectual inquiry into cause and effect in sea power instruments.
Hovgaard's study and intellectual range at the national and strategic level were reported in professional publications. His Danish origins were a source of pride and strength, which he expressed in part as an organizer and founder of the American-Scandinavian Foundation and as the author of The Voyages of the Norsemen to America (1914). Following his retirement from teaching in 1933, Hovgaard moved to Brooklyn, N. Y. , where he continued his professional activities. His work as consultant to the Navy Department and design agents contributed to the quality of the designs executed in the expansion of the navy beginning in the late 1930's. Most of the major ships of the American World War II fleet were designed and constructed under the supervision of Hovgaard's former students.
He died in 1950, after a long illness at the Aurora Hospital in Morristown, N. J. , at the age of ninety-two.
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(Notes Extracted From Letters Written By George E. Russell...)
He was a Lutheran.
He was an honorary member of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects. In 1929 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He was also a lifetime member of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (1932).
On September 19, 1896, he married Marie Ludolphine Elisabeth Nielsen of Copenhagen. They had two children, Ole Mogens and Annette, both born in Denmark.