The Future of Flying

Extract

The Presidential Address to the Engineering Section of the British Association provides each year an opportunity for a survey of some aspect of engineering science which happens to be of especial importance at the time it is given, and often one which the experience of the President of the hour may chance to render especially appropriate. My subject to-day is “The Future of Flying.” Of its importance at the present time there can assuredly be no doubt. Aviation is surveyed by the public with a tempered pride—Pride, it is true, in man's achievement, but Apprehension, it is equally true, as to the use which is being made of it.

The aspiration towards winged flight was expressed, I submit, with great wisdom when, more than two thousand years ago, the Psalmist avowed his longing for “wings like a dove!” How wise a discrimination is revealed by the poet's asking not merely for the power of flight but that his wings shall be “dove-like.” For the space of a generation mankind has possessed the power of flight—a marvellous scientific and technical triumph but, alas, incomplete. Brilliant as was the work of the brothers Wright, the crown of achievement will not be truly won until a grateful mankind sees that the wings gained are the wings of a dove and not those of a bird of prey.