First Royal Society Technology Lecture - Aircraft power plants—past, present and future

Abstract

It is indeed an honour to give a lecture to the Royal Society and I feel particularly privileged by the invitation of the President and Council to deliver the Society’s First Technology Lecture. The subject chosen seems to me a very topical one, both because of the very advanced technology required for the design and manufacture of aero engines and of the interest which has recently centred on the aircraft industry in this country and the controversy on its future. It is now a matter of history that the successful development of the turbo-jet engine by Whittle created a situation where at the end of the Second World War aero engine firms in Britain had a commanding lead. The giants in the aero engine industry had been Pratt & Whitney and Curtiss-Wright in the U. S. A. and both were granted licences to manufacture British jet engines. The Whittle patent was sold to the U. S. A. for a mere song. General Electric had been given all the information on the Whittle W2 jet engine. Technical collaboration agreements were developed with General Electric, Westinghouse and Allison in the U. S. A. and the only other country in the western world with an aircraft gas turbine creative capability was France, who, apart from Turbomeca specializing in small engines, became dependent either upon licences or technical collaboration.