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The Economy of Structures*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2016

Alfred Pugsley*
Affiliation:
University of Bristol

Extract

To anyone who knew Barnwell, however little, it is a great honour and pleasure to be invited to give this lecture as a tribute to his memory. I was too young and too remote to have known him well, but he was the first leading aeroplane designer that I ever met. Some older members of our Society will recall the aeroplane known as the Bristol Bagshot; and a few will remember that in its early flights it was found to suffer from an unexpected, and at that time new, form of control trouble. This occurred shortly after I had started work in the old Airworthiness Department at Farnborough, and the investigation of this new trouble, later to become known as “ Reversal of Aileron Control,” was put upon the new recruit. As a result I came to know Russell, as lively a young man at Bristol then as now, and was taken by him to see Barnwell. I was struck then, as afterwards, that here was a designer of insight and great kindliness who had learnt to combine engineering with the humanities to an unusual degree; and, as I realised afterwards, he had also learnt how to encourage and get the best out of the young men around him. And so I, like so many others, came to admire him.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Aeronautical Society 1959

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Footnotes

*

The Fifth Barnwell Memorial Lecture given to the Bristol Branch of the Royal Aeronautical Society on 17th March 1958.

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