A Question of Time

Abstract

WITH a monthly periodical such as AIRCRAFT ENGINEERING, which has to cover a subject with ever‐increasing ramifications spreading over a wider range than, perhaps, any other branch of engineering, it is clearly inevitable that each particular issue cannot contain an article which will be of immediate value to every reader and that, therefore, the individual may have to wait some months before his particular interest is catered for by a paper dealing with it. This is accentuated in these days by the exigencies of present conditions, which arise not only from the extreme shortage of paper hampering every aspect of literary activity but from an acute scarcity of manpower hitting all British industrial occupations and more particularly the printing trade, as it is not treated as an ‘essential’ industry with a claim to preferential treatment in this respect. This comes particularly hard on AIRCRAFT ENGINEERING which, if it is to fulfil its function of disseminating knowledge on a highly abstruse technical subject, must publish articles involving a high proportion of formulae—since the lessons they are trying to convey can be expressed in no other way.