The Fourteenth Louis Bleriot Lecture “ The Development of Short Range Air Transport through the use of V/STOL Aircraft,” by General Henri Ziegler, General Manager, S. A. Louis Breguet, was given before a distinguished audience which included a number of visitors from France, on 23rd March 1961 in the Society's Lecture Theatre.

The President, Dr. E. S. Moult, C.B.E., B.Sc.(Eng.), F.R.Ae.S., M.I.Mech.E., presided at the meeting. Before the formal proceedings the names of 17 members elected to Fellowship of the Society since December 1960 were read by the Secretary. (These names were published in the January, February and March JOURNALS—Ed.)

After congratulating the new Fellows, Dr. Moult said that this was one of those great occasions of the Society when they united with their friends from France to revere the memory of Louis BleYiot, the first aviator to cross the Channel. This was on the 25th July 1909; since then, they would agree, great things had happened in the field of aeronautics.

The history of Rocketdyne's activity in the field of large liquid-propellant rocket engines is outlined in a chronological review of applicable United States ballistic and space projects. Within security limitations, major rocket engine component improvements and general fabrication techniques are discussed. The trends and new developments in liquid-propellant rocket engine designs are presented and a forecast of future engines is made.

Few things have given me greater satisfaction than the invitation to give the Seventh Barnwell Memorial Lecture, and tell the story of the early history of the Bristol Engine Department.

The Bristol Aeroplane Company which was founded by that great merchant venturer and pioneer of transport, Sir George White, has just passed its 50th Anniversary. I always look upon the 20 odd years spent with the Bristol Company as among some of the happiest and most stimulating in my engineering career.

The year 1868 was destined to be memorable and significant in the history of the Society. It was the year in which the first Aeronautical Exhibition in the world was held.

The Mechanics Magazine for 7th February 1868 said:

In the Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society, November 1959, the writer described an iteration process for the solution of the equations for plane oblique shock waves. Iteration methods avoid the difficulty of reading a solution from a chart; or, given a chart, provide a means of checking such a reading and, usually, of improving the accuracy to any desired degree.

As with plane oblique shocks, it is usual to use a chart to obtain the solution of a problem involving a Prandtl-Meyer expansion fan. The present note proposes an iteration process to avoid the use of a Prandtl-Meyer chart; or, given such a chart, offers the possibility of improvement in the accuracy of the solution obtained by reading from it, the limit being set by the accuracy of the trigonometric tables used.

In a recent technical note, Squire discussed the approximate solution of certain second-order linear differential equations by the method attributed variously to Riccati, Madelung, Wentzel, Kramers and Brillouin (the W.K.B. method), and others. The problem of eigenvalues, frequently met with in this type of equation, does not, however, appear to have received much attention by this method, and in this note a simple formula is developed which appears to give excellent numerical results in many cases.