490 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1940 



find that it is the air that has conquered mankind rather than man- 

 kind the air. Before we can regard the conquest of the air as 

 achieved we must control the warlike menace. 



In our own technical field, we as engineers have long been used to 

 responsibility, to pioneer work, to expert status. But when it comes 

 to the social application of our inventions, we are responsible not in 

 our capacity as engineers but as ordinary inexpert citizens; and here 

 we have been very conscious of our amateur status. We are not 

 experts in the social application of our work ; and we are but a hand- 

 ful among millions. This has been the view of the last generation — 

 though held with increasing uneasiness, as the misuse of our inven- 

 tions has become more apparent. 



But is it possible that the conditions which formed this view are 

 changing? May it be claimed — I think it may — that we as engineers, 

 as technicians, have an important contribution to make toward the 

 peace of the world ? 



I believe that the scientific advances of the present time, and their 

 probable development in the near future, will help us to solve, and not 

 to aggravate, our central problem — the task Lawrence of Arabia spoke 

 of as "the biggest thing to do in the world today" — to bend the newest 

 invention of all, the conquest of the air, to the true service of mankind. 



Mechanical flight was achieved when Wilbur Wright fl^w in De- 

 cember 1930 in that odd-looking machine now so proudly housed in the 

 Science Museum at South Kensington. It certainly does look a queer 

 machine to modern eyes. Although the engine weighed 180 pounds 

 it gave but 12 horsepower ! Of course it was natural that this, like 

 all the other early airplanes, should be built with two pairs of wings. 

 Engineers were well accustomed to carrying bending moments by a 

 form of girder construction having an upper and a lower boom, and 

 in the biplane form of construction the loads could be carried in this 

 familiar way. Such early trials as were made of the monoplane type 

 merely seemed to confirm the idea that a strong wing structure could 

 not thus be found, and the biplane became the accepted type. Speeds 

 in those days were low, and even long after the Great War it was 

 thought that the attainment of high speed would be mainly a matter 

 of putting in more and more engine power. More and more power 

 was accordingly put in. This led indeed to the achievement of higher 

 speeds, but far-sighted designers saw that there was a limit to the 

 extent of progress by this means. But, as a Spanish proverb has it : 

 "When one door shuts another opens." Tlie new door in this case 

 proved to be the streamlining of the external form of the craft as a 

 whole. 



That the cleaning up of the aerodynamic structure could carry per- 

 formance much farther than had hitherto been realized, and do so 



