Cockerell used the idea of pumped air under a hull (this then becoming a plenum, i.e. the opposite of a vacuum) and improved upon it further. Simply pumping air between a hull and the ground wasted a lot of energy in terms of leakage of air around the edges of the hull. Cockerell discovered that by means of generating a wall (curtain) of high-speed downward-directed air around the edges of a hull, that less air leaked out from the sides (due to the momentum of the high-speed air molecules), and thus a greater pressure could be attained beneath the hull. So, with the same input power, a greater amount of lift could be developed, and the hull could be lifted higher above the surface, reducing friction and increasing clearance. This theory was tried, tested and developed throughout the 1950s and 1960s until it was finally realised in full-scale in the SR-N1 hovercraft.