The chairman: I know that everyone here shares with me our pleasure in welcoming as our lecturer one of the most distinguished and one of the most erudite and delightful people of all those who over the years have made their mark on British aeronautics. Lord Kings Norton has been Chancellor of Cranfield Institute of Technology since 1969. He began his career in aviation sixty-one years ago at Cardington, as a young engineer working on the design and construction of that much maligned major project, the airship R101, and then subsequently as Dr. Harold Roxbee Cox (as many of us still remember him) he was the head of the Air Defence Department of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. Next he was Chief Technical Officer of the newly formed Air Registration Board before he returned to the RAE in 1939 as Superintendent of Scientific Research.