Concord Progress

Abstract

Originally, this article took the form of the Twenty‐first Brancker Memorial Lecture delivered to a meeting of The Institute of Transport. The author began his lecture by saying how honoured he was by the invitation to present the 1964 Brancker Memorial Lecture and that he felt especially privileged to have the opportunity of surveying a prospect which he believed would have excited Sir Sefton Brancker's most ardent enthusiasm—the prospect of reducing inter‐continental journey times‐by air to the same durations as those universally accepted for inter‐city journeys by rail and road. Previous Brancker Memorial Lectures had summarized the general development of British civil aviation from its earliest days to 1946 and had covered particular aspects of its very rapid expansion since that date. 1946 was a significant year because it marked the resurgence of commercial flying after seven years of wartime restrictions and regulation; it promised a new deal to both operators and travelling public, with the opportunity of usefully applying technical advances achieved during the war period; at the same time it threw into sharp contrast the relative design capabilities of the British and American aircraft manufacturing industries.