The Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society, in one form or another, is the oldest aeronautical publication in the World, with a continuous record of publication.

The Aeronautical Society of Great Britain was founded on January 12th, 1866, and the first report of the proceedings of the Society was published in 1867 by the firm of Cassell, Petter and Galpin, of Ludgate Hill, E.C., price Is. 6d.

It was a bold venture to start an aeronautical society in those days, and it is worth while recalling the year 1866. It was the year Prussia became head of the new German confederation which was the beginning of modern Germany, and it was the year that the first treaty of alliance was signed between Italy and Germany.

In those days Dickens, Browning, Tennyson were the giants of their time. Women wore crinolines, shawls and poke bonnets, and men light trousers with frock coats and top hats.

All aircraft engineers profess a belief in the importance of low structure weight. To implement this belief our efforts must be comprehensive and consistent and in the search for sound method it is important that we review, from time to time, familiar habits that are based on compromise. In the past the comparative merit of a particular aircraft structure has depended on a series of individual assessments, many of them semiarbitrary.These assessments have covered the whole field from the choice of the initial design load factors and the valuation of the working stresses right up to the ultimate maximum permitted all-up weight.

It cannot be denied that many of the prewar valuations were haphazard, usually conservative. This is demonstrated by the successful types of aircraft operating in service at weights considerably in excess of their original design estimate. Although this state of affairs proved highly fortunate it is a method that should not be perpetuated.

Systematic knowledge of the theorems available for building statically determinate frameworks appears to be restricted in this country to a very small circle. Many engineers are content with the knowledge that a simply-stiff plane framework can be produced by attaching a joint O by bars OA, OB. to joints A and B of a simply-stiff plane framework; and that a simply-stiff space framework can be produced by attaching a joint O by bars OA, OB, OC to joints A, B and C of a simply-stiff space framework. By these simple means, two- and threedimensional simply-stiff frameworks can be built up respectively from the basic triangle and basic tetrahedron.

Most textbooks give no other rules of synthesis, and are content to give as “ proofs ” of the relationships existing between the number of joints j and the number of bars m of a simply-stiff framework (m = 2j—3 in the two-dimensional case and m=3j—6 in the three-dimensional case) the obvious inferences of these relationships from the system of synthesis just described.

The designer of transport aircraft can play a very important rôle in improving the economic efficiency of air transport and the following analysis is devoted to a review of some calculations illustrating this aspect of aircraft design.

Economic efficiency must not be obtained at the expense of other necessary qualities, and it would be as well to touch briefly on some of these before considering cost alone.

1. (a) Safety and Comfort

2. American experience shows these factors to be as important as any. The introduction of a type of aircraft with a good reputation in these respects leads to remarkable popularity.

3. (b) Speed

4. This, the main advantage of air over sea, rail and road transport (reducing a journey of weeks to days, and of days to hours), has a very different importance when reduced to the possible saving of a few further hours or minutes. For usual aircraft engine combinations, it will probably be found worthwhile to increase the cruising speed to that at which economic and safe continuous running of the engines is not exceeded.