Ross Holland, age 13, of Albuquerque, M.M., for his question:
WHEN WAS THE FIRST MOTORBOAT BUILT?
Historians say that the first motorboat was designed and invented by a man named F.W. Ofeldt of the United States in 1885. It was designed strictly for pleasure.
Ofeldt's craft was powered by a two horsepowered engine which used naphtha for fuel.
Two years later in Germany, a man named Gottlieb Daimler was the first to put a gasoline engine in a boat. And then another two years later, in 1889, the first motorboat powered by an electric storage battery was exhibited at the Paris Exposition.
Motor boating, however, didn't become practical or popular until the gasoline engine was completely perfected in the early 1900s.
The first motorboats had long, narrow hulls and large, heavy engines. Early motorboats seldom achieved speeds faster than 30 miles per hour. But it wasn't too long until inboard motorboats came along that were able to exceed 100 miles per hour.
Outboard motorboats are the most popular type of motorboat for sportsmen. They include small, open craft like rowboats, as well as outboard cruisers more than 20 feet long. These boats have cabins equipped with bunks, stoves, refrigerators and radios.
Outboard hulls may be made of wooden planks, fiberglass, aluminum, molded plywood or sheet plywood. The most popular outboard motorboats measure from 10 to 18 feet long and serve for cruising, fishing and water skiing.
Inboard motorboats range from small launches to ocean going yachts. Many vacationers enjoy speeding over lakes and towing water skiers with open inboard motors. These boats are generally from 17 to 25 feet long.
A flat bottomed inboard motorboat, called a hydroplane, has a light hull and a powerful motor designed especially for racing. It does not slice through the water like other motorboats. Instead, it lifts up and skims over the water's surface.
The Gold Cup race is perhaps the leading national motorboat race. It was first run on the Hudson River in New York in 1904.
Outboard motorboats started to gain wide popularity in the 1940s. Before 1941, some 50 horsepower racing motors had been built, but the average outboard motor in the United States had only 3.6 horsepower.
Motor sizes expanded in the late 1940s, after World War II ended. Then light motors could be built of aluminum alloys.
By the 1950s, manufacturers were making outboard motors with as much as 70 horsepower. In 1960, a man named Burt Roiss Jr., of Spokane, Wash., set an outboard motorboat speed record of 115.547 miles per hour.
In the early 1960s, manufacturers started producing jet turbine inboard boats, diesel outboard motors and hydrofoils.