Non‐Ferrous Metals for Aircraft: The First Instalment of a Complete Survey of the Properties of Aluminium and Magnesium Alloys Available to Purchase

THE rapid development of the social structure of the world during the past century is due, in no small measure, to improvements in communication. In certain ways we have annihilated distance completely, through the invention of telegraphs, telephones, and more recently and more wonderfully, of wireless telegraphy and telephony, and we are on the verge of another annihilation through the perfection of television. We have not yet discovered the magic carpet that will do for more material substances what these inventions have done for writing, speech, and vision. Nevertheless, transport by water is more rapid and more certain then ever before, while the motor vehicle has given us, during the last thirty years, a remarkable improvement, in rapid and reliable communication on land. The most recent and most spectacular development is that of aerial communication, which has given us a speed quite unattainable in any other form of transport. Metals are essential to the development of modern aircraft, if only for the reason that the motive power cannot be generated without their use. It would be incorrect to claim that the conquest of the air has been dependent on the use of non‐ferrous materials in substantial proportions, and indeed the first aeroplanes contained them only in small amounts, but it is certainly true that the present state of air communications is in large measure due to the development of non‐ferrous alloys, and their use in aircraft construction in large quantities.