IN introducing the lecturer, Dr Thurston said Professor Lea is a distinguishedengineer and professor of engineering, very well known both in aeronautics andin the world of general engineering He is a Whitworth Scholar, the first, or oneof the first Doctors of Science (Engineering) in the University of London, andthe author of many valuable researches During the war he was responsible formany researches of great value to the nation, not only in the design ofaeroplanes as a whole, but also in construction of metal parts and fittingsProfessor Lea’s activities have been so numerous that it is difficult togive a brief summary of his life work in a few sentences, but we may be sure ofthis—that the paper which he will give us to-night will add to hisalready great reputation, and at the same time be a most valuable contributionto our own Proceedings I now have pleasure in calling upon Professor Lea to readus his paper

IN view of the growing interest in the development of Airships as a step towards the improvement of commercial relationship between the Mother country and the various parts of her far flung Empire, there must be some to whom this subject is of interest, and therefore, as one who has had experience, both in the construction and in the actual flying of several types of Airships, I submit the following brief account of the development of the Airship of to-day and also the possibilities that lie before this type of aircraft

The earliest experiments of a serious character in “Lighter than Air” type of aircraft took place about the year 1776, immediately following the discovery of Hydrogen gas by Cavendish, but it was not until 1783 that the first really successful flight was made by a Frenchman, Professor Charles, who remained in the air for three and three-quarter hours and covered a distance of forty miles in a balloon of his own design, the lifting medium of which was Hydrogen

DR WATTS, in introducing Captain Barnwell, said I am sure we are all very muchindebted to Captain Barnwell for giving us the benefit of his knowledge andexperience The subject cannot fail to be interesting to all who are associatedwith aricraft design, although the attitude of aircraft designers generallyvaries between two extremes On the one hand there are some who consider airscrewdesign as something mysterious, to be left to an outside expert, and on theother hand there are some who consider it so simple that it can safely be leftto an internal subordinate It is quite common knowledge that Captain Barnwelladopts the happy medium, and deals with the subject himself

I remember that 14 or 15 years ago, at the old British and Colonial AeroplaneCompany, Captain Barnwell was designing a special “hush-hush”machine I was a mere nobody in the drawing office, entrusted with airscrewdesign, but I remember that Captain Barnwell designed his own airscrew for this“hush-hush” machine, much to my secret chagrin So behind thispaper there is 14 or 15 years of personal knowledge of airscrew design