Aircraft with Stressed Skin Metal Construction

Extract

I exhibited the “Silver Streak” before a patent was granted to me because my Patent Agent, the late Mr. Griffith Brewer, had asked me to allow him to make a search, and this took a considerable time. What he found as being the “state of the art” is described in my first patent, 185,992, in clauses 70 to 85 on the first page. (Application date, 10 November 1921; Complete Left 15 February 1922; Complete Accepted 21 September 1922). None of those projects described as being the “state of the art” were ever carried into practice successfully, and a study of statements in 70 to 85 will show that the Inventors had failed to realise that such structures as they visualised could not safely be made, as indeed they were never made, and carried into practice in an actual aeroplane or flying-boat.