Abstract
IN his Royal Institution discourse on “Research on the Control of Aeroplanes,” which appears as a Supplement to this week's issue of NATURE, Prof. B. Melvill Jones gives a very lucid exposition of a problem that has long been a subject of controversy among aeronautical experts, young though the science be. Broadly speaking, the question at issue is, whether safety in flight should be achieved along the lines of construction for aerodynamic stability, or along the lines of pilot controllability. The theoretical experts have rather inclined to the former, the practical flying men always to the latter; and Prof. Jones, who has played the part both of pilot and theoretician, is well qualified to appraise both viewpoints. It is not difficult to appreciate the influences that have stirred the theoretical experts. Bryan's masterly exposition of the disturbed motion of an aeroplane regarded as a rigid body and his analysis of the conditions that make for stability caught the imaginations of the interested mathematicians, trained as they were in the Newtonian school of simplified abstractions from reality, and for a long period determined the direction of aeronautical research.
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News and Views. Nature 121, 765–769 (1928). https://doi.org/10.1038/121765a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/121765a0