Opening address

In opening the Conference Professor Pippard said that he felt rather like some prehistoric animal which had been revitalized in order to inaugurate a new zoological gardens. He was quite certain that a creature of that sort would share his feeling of wonder at the way things had evolved since he was retired as a museum exhibit. It was a very great pleasure for him to be at the Conference. He had to restrain himself, because he could say a great deal about stress analysis and the particular interests of those present at the Conference.From the standpoint of the engineer, whether his responsibility lay in the design of machines or the design of structures, the most important consideration after that of appropriateness for its particular function was the behaviour of his product in service. A full understanding of this behaviour implied an accurate knowledge of the stresses and displacements which would occur not only under working loads but also under much more severe conditions. In the absence of such knowledge his design might on the one hand be uneconomical, or on the other—which was worse— unsafe.