Getting Down to Laminar Flow

AS some of our readers will be aware, PROFESSOR GOLDSTEIN'S Wright‐Brothers lecture appears in the April issue of the Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, which has reached this country just at the time when we are going to press, and it was, in fact, in accordance with the usual practice that, at the request of the Institute, we postponed the start of our own publication of it until this priority had been ensured. A comparatively small proportion of our readers, however, even in the United States of America, receive the Journal; whereas it is, in our opinion, very necessary that this lecture should reach as wide a circle of aerodynamicists and designers as possible. It is the first authoritative statement on a subject on which practically nothing has been published and as to which widespread ignorance prevails outside the privileged few who have themselves been connected with the work—as is evidenced by the number of references to unpublished A.R.C. Reports given in PROFESSOR GOLDSTEIN'S bibliography. It carries the cachet of having been prepared and delivered by the chairman of the British Aeronautical Research Council and is therefore on that account, as well as by reason of its own intrinsic merit, a quite outstanding contribution to knowledge. We are sure for all these reasons that the bulk of our readers will agree with our decision to make it available to them in AIRCRAFT ENGINEERING. It is, in fact, in accordance with our regular practice to make these lectures delivered in America by British authors available to our readers—we, for instance, published DR ROXBEE COX'S contribution on ‘British Aircraft Gas‐Turbine Practice’ two years ago.