The Library Shelf

An alternative title to this book might be ‘The Economic Development of the Modern Airliner’, because what sets the work apart from others on the history of the development of the aeroplane is the emphasis placed on the interplay of technical advances with improvements in operating economics. Inevitably the relative difficulty of quantifying the output of a military aircraft in economic terms has caused the book to be mainly concerned with the civil airliner; military aircraft are discussed only where they have a bearing on the development of civil aviation.