F. W. Lanchester obtained his first technical education at the Hartley Institute in Southampton, later to become the University of Southampton, during the years 1886–89. His autobiography describes in vivid terms the primitive nature of the workshop and apparatus available. He would indeed be shocked at the wealth of modern equipment now encountered in engineering departments of a University. At the same time, no one can possibly say that this lack of equipment influenced his pioneer spirit or his extraordinary clarity of thought, not only in the fields of aeronautical and automobile engineering, but also in subjects as diverse as the musical scale, poetry and even relativity.

The June 1963 Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on the Third London Airport concluded that a third London Airport would be required in the early 1970's, and possibly a fourth soon after 1980. It also brought out that because of the large amounts of air space required for the sequencing areas and approach paths of each airport, and because of limitations imposed by the positioning of the main air traffic routeings, the choice of possible sites within reasonable distance of Central London for the third airport was severely restricted. In a postscript to the Report, it was recognised that after the third airport has taken over a further block of air space, the difficulty of siting a fourth airport would be even more severe.

The advances made in the development of gas turbine engines during the past two decades have been remarkable. The engines have been improved tremendously in terms of power, weight, efficiency and cost. They are now being applied successfully as the prime movers for helicopters, VTOL aircraft, ground power units and for many other diverse purposes, besides the more conventional military and civil aircraft.

There have been parallel advances in the development of gas turbine engine fuel systems (which for convenience may be subdivided into the “control” and the “pumping arrangement”). These systems were originally wholly hydro-mechanical in nature. Sixteen or so years ago, the first supplementary electronic devices were introduced into fuel control systems. Since then, progressively more complex hybrid electronic/hydro-mechanical systems have been employed, with a corresponding easement of the demands on the hydro-mechanical portion. In 1957 Sturrock described to this Society what is now the classic Proteus engine control system used in Britannia aircraft. The satisfactory experience gained with the Proteus system led to the adoption of a comprehensive electronic fuel control system, coupled to a relatively simple fuel pumping system, for the supersonic Olympus engine. This system has been described by Hunt and by Colburn, Tweedy and Dent in papers presented at the joint RAeS/IEE conference “The Importance of Electricity in Aircraft” in 1962. Further papers by Rush presented at the same conference and by Airey in 1963, were devoted to the more general aspects of control.