Elton W. Miller, Chief of Aerodynamics who is now NASA’s Langley Research Center A propeller stands at the entrance to the Research Tunnel in Hampton, Virginia, in this Sept. 9, 1926 photo. It is in front of the entrance. Sperry M-1 Messengerthe first full-scale aircraft was tested in the tunnel.
The Propeller Research Tunnel, or PRT as it came to be known, was only the third National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics wind tunnel and the largest constructed. The PRT was actually the largest tunnel built anywhere in the world at the time. Designed to accommodate a full-scale propeller, the PRT’s throat diameter was 20 feet.
Learn more about the PRT from this report originally published in December 1928.
Image credit: NASA