In the first issue of the Journal for 1966, the Centenary Year of the Royal Aeronautical Society, an account of the history of the Rocket Propulsion Establishment, no matter how brief, may appear to some as an unwarrantable intrusion. It is in this year, 1966, that the Establishment will complete only its second decade of existence, but it may claim to have contributed to the advancement of aeronautics, in the broadest sense of this term.

The First hundred years of the Royal Aeronautical Society have seen nearly all of man's significant achievements in controlled flight by airships, aeroplanes and helicopters. This is hardly surprising, since the Society was formed in 1866, when the time was nearly ripe for such developments to begin. It is perhaps even more striking, however, to realise that throughout the second half of the same century, most of the early evolution of an even more ambitious form of flight has also taken place.

What has aviation meant to me?

It has meant being taken, as a boy of seven or eight (in 1913 or 1914) to Buc, a small airfield near Paris, to see the daring Pegoud “loop the loop”. I can still so well remember arriving at this small airfield, and this before daybreak—the air had to be very still for this daring feat!

Waiting for the sun to rise—the haze slowly clearing up—a few dim figures—a small boy clutching his father's hand. Then a dot on the horizon, a gentle hum, a graceful machine and then the “loop”, the breathless pause at the apex and the silence—then it vanishing away.

I am one of a dwindling band of old men who could fill in the then of Aeronautics’ Then and Now if only their memory would serve them. Aeronautically I am almost exactly half as old as our Society as it reaches its centenary: it is 50 years since I had my first job. The Editor has invited me to “write what you like”. The dangerous freedom of this invitation prompts me to exhibit myself as what I am, a survivor from another age—and to add a few reflections on the Now as I see it.

One Century's end is but the beginning of the next. The completion of the First Hundred Years of the life of the Royal Aeronautical Society—“posterity's tributes to its favoured children of fame“—heralds the start of a Second Hundred Years the promise of which is no less glittering than the first.

“Ring out the old, ring in the new“—our “cheerful yesterdays, our confident tomorrows”.