redesigned hull shape. She was able to achieve speeds in excess of 30 knots (56 km/h). Normandie was famous for many things, including her clean entry into the water and markedly reduced bow wave. Normandies great rival, the British liner , achieved equivalent speeds using traditional stem and hull design. However, a crucial difference was that Normandie achieved these speeds with approximately thirty per cent less engine power than Queen Mary and a corresponding reduction in fuel use. Bulbous bow designs were also developed and used by the Imperial Japanese Navy. A modest bulbous bow was used in a number of their ship designs, including the light cruiser and the carriers and . A far more radical bulbous bow design solution was incorporated into their massively large , including , and the aircraft carrier . The modern bulbous bow was developed by Dr. Takao Inui at the University of Tokyo during the 1950s and 1960s, independently of Japanese naval research. Inui based his research on earlier findings by scientists made after Taylor discovered that ships fitted with a bulbous forefoot exhibited substantially lower drag characteristics than predicted. The bulbous bow concept was first definitively studied by Thomas Havelock, Cyril Wigley and Georg Weinblum, including Wigley's 1936 work "The Theory of the Bulbous Bow and its Practical Application" which examined the issues of wave production and damping. Inui's initial scientific papers on the effect of bulbous bow on wave-making resistance were collected into a report published by the University of Michigan in 1960. His work came to widespread attention with his paper "Wavemaking Resistance of Ships" published by the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers in 1962. It was eventually found that drag could be reduced by about five per cent. Experimentation and refinement slowly improved the geometry of bulbous bows, but they were not widely exploited until computer modelling techniques enabled researchers at the University of British Columbia to increase their performance to a practical level in the 1980s. Design considerations Bulbous bows embody the following defining characteristics: Length-wise shape Cross-section Length of forward projection Position of the shape's axis (e.g. forward or upwards) While the primary purpose of such bulbs is to reduce the power required to drive a vessel at its operating speed, their sea-keeping characteristics are also important. A ship's wave-making characteristics at its operating speed are reflected in its Froude number. A ship designer can