Flight is the most 'perfect and unconstrained form of animal motion; it is also the most widespread, since it offers the most favourable conditions of survival in the struggle for existence. Animal species losing the power of flight, are an easy prey for their enemies, and speedily become extinct.

Man, having achieved the power of mechanical flight by technical skill, has now introduced the art of flying in his own struggle for existence, as abundantly proved by the history of the past thirty years. Research, and not engineering research alone, has stood in the forefront of this development: filling the rôle of the advanced reconnaissance unit in development, experimentation, and the tactical application of the power of flight.

Man, aircraft-borne, now flies higher (record altitude 17,000 m.), faster (speed record 755 km./h.), and farther (long-range distance record over 12,000 km.), than any other animal. This raises a query as to the effect of flight on the human organism.

It is just one hundred years ago, towards the end of March, 1843, that the invention or design of the first power-driven aeroplane, Henson's so-called “Aerial Steam Carriage,” was made public to the world at large. The centenary marks an important step in the history of heavier-than-air flight, and in view of the development arrived at in the aeroplane of to-day—its great size, immense power, long range, and astonishing speed—the event assumes, in retrospect, a greater interest and significance than has been hitherto accorded to it. It is fitting, therefore—the more so in that the ‘inventor’ was an Englishman—that this notable occasion should not be allowed to pass unnoticed in the pages of the Royal Aeronautical Society's Journal. There is, moreover, the additional reason that the Society can claim an indirect connection with Henson's project, in as much as John Stringfellow, who was closely associated with Henson in their joint struggles to produce a model flying-machine, was one of the Society's most active and enthusiastic members in its early years.