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Aviation History
1946
1946 - 0010.PDF
FLIGHT JANUARY 3RD, 1946 1866 . . . AND ALL THAT , D. S. Brown, a member, had called atten- tion to the possibilities of aluminium on account of its lightness. Nowadays we are very much concerned with the speed of sound. In 1881 a member named Scoffern, in a paper read before the Society, drew attention to the rapid increase in the rate of resistance at high speed: "... e.g., at a speed exceeding 1,200 feet per second. The speed of sound in air is approximately 1,100 feet per second, and it is now definitely known that as this speed is approached the resistance increases very rapidly." A Jet Forecast It is not very easy these days to realise howdifficult it was to forecast anything about air- craft, when no aircraft had flown, and no onereally knew what kind of thing it would look like when it did fly. Judging by some up-to-date comments on modern machines, some people are still wondering what a real aircraftwill look like! Nor were there any of those weapons of modern research to help in pre-diction. What, then, can be more remarkable than Captain Griffiths' lecture before theSociety on December nth, 1886, which had the astonishing title, "Jet Propulsion forAeronautical Purposes'' ? Nearly sixty years were to pass before the tiny flame thenlighted was to blaze up for all the world to see. Captain Griffiths remarked in his paper,'' For a motor there is nothing can be compared to the jet system for simplicity and smallnessof volume," and ended, " If we have to look for a lighter motor than this, I believe our case ishopeless." In 1891 Sir Hiram Maxim joined the Societyand described his experiments which came so near success. The following year HoratioPhillips joined and in 1893 described his flying machine which, weighing 402 lb., had lifteditself in the air at a speed of 28 miles per hour over a dis- tance of several hundred feet. "I think we have now arrived at that stage," wroteBrearey, the honorary Secretary of the Society, '' which en'ables us sufficiently to account for the formation ofthis Society in 1866, and those who have supported it may now congratulate one another that in some form the endis certain to be attained." More and more members were taking part in activeattempts to fly. Moy, Frost, Brearey, Maxim and Phillips were followed by Percy Pilcher, whose gliding experimentsled to the stage of fitting a small motor in 1899, a month or two before his death in agliding accident. In April, 1904, the Journalpublished a paper by Orville Wright, giving an account ofthose astonishing four flights made on December 17th, 1903,by himself and his brother. It was the first authenticaccount in this country. A few more years andmembers of the Society were flying themselves. The firsttwo Englishmen to go up in the air in an aircraft—WilburWright was the pilot—were Capt. J. Lawrence Pritchard Griffith Brewer and .Badenthe present secretary of the Powell, who were both to Society become presidents of the " Flight " Photograph. The imposing entrance and staircase of the Society's premises at No. 4, Hamilton Place. Society. The first Englishman to fly, Lord Brabazon,and the holder of No. 1 Pilot's Certificate, is a past-presi- dent of the Society. Verdon-Roe (one of the earliest to fly and the designerof one of the most famous aircraft of the last war, the Avro 504K), S. F. Cody, who won the MilitaryTrials in 1912, Howard Flanders, W. O. Manning, Oswald Short, Alec Ogilvie, Robert Blackburn, Hand-ley Page; these and many other members of the Society were enthusiastically flying and designing or build-ing aircraft in those years from 1909 to the outbreak of the" first war. T. O. M. Sopwith was laying down the founda-tions which culminated in the famous Camel and other machines. De Havilland was designing at the Royal Air-craft Factory, with Folland and others. To mention all, indeed, would be to list nearly all the famous desigr>|f jfand constructors in the country at the time who were members of the Society. Royal Prefix For forty years the membership had not exceeded 100,and for the greater part of that time a devoted band of some thirty had kept the spirit of aviation in this countryalive. But now, at long last, the Society was coming into its own. In 1918 it was granted the title Royal and itsmembership had grown to over a thousand. The slump which followed the war, and the neglect olaviation generally, had its effect on membership, which steadily declined for the next five years. But the inaugura-tion of an examination for Associate Fellowship, the forma- tion of the first branch at Coventry, quickly followed by
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