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The Royal Aeronautical Society 1866 — 1966*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2016

J. Laurence Pritchard
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Extract

        Humanity with all its fears
        With all the hopes of future years,
        Is hanging breathless on thy Fate.
      Longfellow.

    12th January 1966, is the one hundredth birthday of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain.

    The story of the first hundred years of the Aeronautical Society began with long data-less periods of unfulfilled hopes. Like the paradoxical supersonic aeroplanes which arrive at their destinations before they are timed to take off, the story of the Society was started fifty years before it began, by Sir George Cayley, who wrote a famous paper on Aerial Navigation, laying down the fundamental principles of heavier-than-air flight.

    Type
    A Century of British Aeronautics
    Information
    The Aeronautical Journal , Volume 70 , Issue 661 , January 1966 , pp. 5 - 20
    Copyright
    Copyright © Royal Aeronautical Society 1966

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    Footnotes

    *

    Captain Pritchard was Secretary of the Society from 1926 to 1951 and since his retirement has been writing the History of the Society. It is hoped that the first volume will be published this year. For this Centenary JOURNAL he has covered a few of the earlier years of the Society, the first years after the First World War when he was Editor of the Journal and later, Secretary, finishing with some account of the Society and the Second World War which may not be so well known to members.—Ed.

    References

    Note on page 5 * Captain Pritchard was Secretary of the Society from 1926 to 1951 and since his retirement has been writing the History of the Society. It is hoped that the first volume will be published this year. For this Centenary JOURNAL he has covered a few of the earlier years of the Society, the first years after the First World War when he was Editor of the JOURNAL and later, Secretary, finishing with some account of the Society and the Second World War which may not be so well known to members.—Ed.

    Note on page 9 * The Council Minutes in 1867 give the cost of printing the first Annual Report (1000 copies) as £36 19s 6d.

    Note on page 11 * This was the first wind tunnel in the world but no illustration of it or detailed data have ever been found. Designed under the aegis of the Society by Wenham and Browning, it was built by Messrs. Penn of Greenwich at whose engineering works the experiments for which is was designed were conducted. The Royal Aircraft Establishment drew an "impression" from the data available but this is, necessarily, imaginative. It is particularly strange that no photograph can be found since both Glaisher and Wenham were members of the British Photographic Society. Local inquiry has failed to trace the successors, if any, of Penn's Engineering Works.—Ed.

    Note on page 15 * Father of the D. Keith-Lucas who is now a Vice-President of the Society and who has recently transferred from industry to the academic world.

    Note on page 17 * Nevertheless the Institution did amalgamate with the Society in 1927 just as in the next Secretary's day (Dr. A. M. Ballantyne), the Helicopter Association of Great Britain joined the Society, in 1960 to become The Rotorcraft Section.