Apart from Royal patronage and the manifest concern with aviation, it must seem to many people that there is little in common between the Royal Aeronautical Society and the Royal Aircraft Establishment. Yet research into the lesser known activities of the early RAE has revealed not only a comparable antiquity but also a remarkable similarity in the early history of the two bodies. Both had to fight hard to stay alive, and often continuing existence depended upon a tenuous thread liable to snap at any moment.

In its early years the Society was essentially a group of dilettante with all the advantages as well as the disadvantages that this entails.