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THE use of a rotating wing in place of a fixed one has long had a peculiar fascination for inventors, no doubt due in the main to the attractiveness of hovering flight, as it is called. The ability to hover carries with it the ability to alight gently, and in a limited space—an enormous advantage in foggy weather. Our own Government has taken a keen interest in the possibilities of the rotating wing. Soon after the Great War the Air Ministry started the experimental building of the Brennan helicopter. This was a four‐bladed device with a central engine and gear drive to two wing propellers. Much time and much money were consumed, but even after many years of effort the world was still without a helicopter which had made a cross‐country journey of even 10 miles; and I might have named a much shorter distance than that. Then there came the able young Spanish engineer, de la Cierva, with his autogiro and its ingenious and attractive system of hinged blades. To embark on the investigation of the rotating wing in flight is an entrancing adventure. The controls are different, new forces are brought into play, the technique of flight has to be learnt afresh. At the end of the research you may be no further on, so far as practical equipment is concerned, though you should be wiser; but there is always a chance that a pass may be found between the mountains of difficulty which will lead to the “Promised Land.” Most human adventures bring the adventurers in the end to the spot from which they started, and not infrequently the adventurers are content enough, after their hardships, that that should be so. Señor Cierva was adventurous to the point of temerity, and in the end he achieved what he sought—a new form of flying machine which really did fly. With great pertinacity he built machine after machine until, in the end, aided I am glad to add by British support, he constructed a machine which could fly across country in secure stages for thousands of miles. This, however, promising as it was, was not really the end of such a quest. A most difficult part had still to come, viz., the relatively humdrum requirement that the economics of autogiro transport must be such as to enable it to rival the conventional type of aircraft. In this stage we now are; it looks at present as though we may have to be content with a drop in top speed, rate of climb, and fuel economy in order to reap the great advantages of the autogiro in respect of safe landing. In striking this balance of merits, it must be borne in mind that the great advantage of safety in landing is now claimed also by the conventional type merely unconventionalised to the extent of being fitted with the Handley Page auto‐slots. If the rotating wing should fail to make good through the autogiro, will it do so through the Isacco helicogyre? This machine is an autogiro in which each of the four blades carries a small engine and airscrew. One is being built in this country, and is expected to be ready for flying tests this year. Such a machine, if it flics at all, should be able to ascend vertically as well as descend vertically. If it did this successfully at not too great an economic cost it would have merits with which the conventional type of aircraft, slotted or otherwise, would find it difficult to compete. But the path is likely to be long and difficult. In the last twenty years or so there has been time to discover and correct most of the bad habits of the ordinary airplane. British civil aviation as represented by Imperial Airways has had not a single fatal accident to any passenger for over three years—a splendid record. With these new flying machines we have to start again, and to start from scratch—to discover painfully and irritatingly how many little things there are to go wrong when there is no previous technique to guide us. With the autogiro most of our trouble, almost all of it, has been due to small breakages or failures of parts subjected to forms of stress not met with in any previous machines, whether for flying or for anything else.

In the last decade, modern food technology has ensured that supermarket shelves are stacked with new ingenious and exciting food ranges. This is all very nice for the consumer but it has presented some headaches for quality control personnel. Consumer expectations are now very high and the race to satisfy these expectations has sometimes been at the sacrifice of quality control: an obvious example is the increasing incidence of food poisoning. What is more, as we approach a single common European market there is additional pressure from the EC to conform to community standards of food quality.

The Hall Effect sensor is continuing to undergo some ingenious improvements, as a researcher outlines.

The purpose of this paper is to study the scientific developments behind the announcement of a sensor mimicking the human skin.

A brief review of the potential applications and design constraints of the robot skin is followed by an examination of published papers that trace its development.

When sensors are embedded in an elastic matrix, connecting wires and mechanical attachments undermine the mechanical properties of that matrix. Progressive miniaturisation of the sensing devices, and ingenious methods of supplying power and communicating data, have gradually overcome this problem.

The paper reveals the integration of innovative sensing, signal processing and power‐supply technologies.

The purpose of this paper is to review the different methods of isolating sensitive equipment from the effects of vibrations.

The passive mechanisms of springs and dampers, air tables, and negative stiffness are explained, and practical examples given. Next is a description of various active systems in which actuators respond in real time to feedback from motion sensors. Finally, some unusual and interesting applications are explored.

The need for vibration isolation is growing, because of increasing vibrations and the requirement for higher spatial resolution. Ingenious mechanical design allows passive systems to work with frequencies of the order of 1 Hz. Modern accelerometers detect absolute motion and allow disconnection from the vibrations of the floor. Applications include the stabilisation of interferometric gravitational‐wave detectors.

The paper points out a range of solutions to the engineer combating problematic metrology environments.

The effective and ingenious tapping of people resources has become an important long‐range strategic concern. But as we witness company after company and union after union announce its new people‐based programs, most often using the quality‐of‐work‐life (QWL) label, we have begun to see alarmingly consistent signs of superficiality in what is being said, urged and done.

FIRST doubling, then tripling of the rate of production of the Lockheed Lightning fighter without expansion of plant size has been made possible, by ingenious engineering adaptation of automobile chain‐line assembly practice to aircraft manufacture. The accompanying illustrations show clearly some of the features of this system.

Equipment, Programmes, Techniques and Projects. Variable‐pitch drop‐out ram air turbines which provide a stand‐by electrical or hydraulic power supply in an emergency on VC10 and Trident airliners, are being tested at Dowty Rotol Ltd.'s Gloucester plant by an ingenious technique using a stroboscope in conjunction with a closed‐circuit television system, both supplied by EMI Electronics Ltd.

Surviving to a great age, I maintain a vivid interest in literature and journalism. I was pleased therefore to receive from the Editor an issue of the LIBRARY REVIEW, also a copy of his ingenious account of William Morris as Seen by his Contemporaries. These contemporaries were more likely to know what Morris's character was than the many later biographers who had never seen him or heard him talk, or, when they had, had used the reticence familiar in Victorian biographers. I appreciate the judgements made on the important Life of Morris by Prof. J. W. Mackail, which cannot be called a classic, ignoring as it does, for instance, the connexion between Morris's wife and Rossetti, which was well known to me and others who were waiting for somebody to reveal it.

Explaining how the world's resources could be gobbled up by a mushrooming population within thirty years is not easy with youngsters whose grasp of geography — let alone economics — is limited. But this is the task currently being undertaken at ILEA'S Cockpit Theatre in Marylebone. The team of five actor‐teachers devised an ingenious and highly complex game with groups of youngsters each representing a country, and with cards representing units of food, population, industrial potential and natural disasters. For two hours they bargain, negotiate, fight and strike up alliances in an effort to get the population fed; but as the century progresses the population cards far outweigh those for food, despite all their efforts.