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THE Department of Aeronautical Engineering in the University of Bristol was founded in 1945, when the Bristol Aeroplane Company generously presented the University with funds sufficient for the endowment of a Chair, to be known as the Sir George White Chair of Aeronautical Engineering. This was the fourth aeronautical Chair to be founded in Great Britain, having been preceded some quarter of a century earlier by the Mond Chair at Cambridge and the Zaharoff Chair at Imperial College, and a decade earlier by the Wakefield Chair, subsequently abolished, at University College, Hull. In addition, before 1945, a number of universities and colleges—in particular, Queen Mary College1—had offered courses with an aeronautical content, but not in independent departments headed by a professor. The present writer was appointed to the new Chair at Bristol in the summer of 1945; but owing to his commitments at the Royal Aircraft Establishment was not able to take up the appointment until January 1946. Meanwhile the first students, to a total of five, had been recruited and, in October 1945, had begun their general engineering studies in other departments of the Faculty of Engineering.

The Board of Trade have re‐appointed Sir Roy Allen, C.B.E., M.A., D.Sc.(Econ.) as a member of the Air Transport Licensing Board to serve for a further term from October 1, 1967 to September 30, 1968. Mr. J. H. Lawrie has also been re‐appointed for a further term from November 1, 1967 to September 30, 1968.

FLS Aerospace has announced an expansion scheme for its aircraft maintenance hangar at Manchester International Airport. Currently measuring 108m × 108m (11,664sq.m) the FLS Aerospace hangar is already said to be the largest hangar at Manchester.

The paper aims to use aluminium alloy to substitute steel as the main material of ultra-precision hydro-static bearing system for an ultra-precision plastic electronics production system to lower the manufacturing cost. The total cost of diamond turning and nickel-based electroless coating of an aluminium alloy bearing is expected to be less than the cost of manufacturing a stainless steel bearing.

The paper used a large amount of theoretical calculation to obtain optimal specifications of the bearing system. ANSYS modelling was selected to simulate the deflection of the bearing shaft under high oil pressure. Hundreds of measurements were conducted after the bearing had been manufactured.

The paper provides industrial application insights on using aluminium alloy with a high-quality nickle-based electroless coating as a successful substitution of stainless steel. This created a more economic hydro-static bearing system.

Because of the time limit, different rotational speed tests shall be conducted in the future.

The paper provides implications for the application of nickel-based electroless coating to improve the surface property and bending strength of aluminium alloy, as well as classifying ultra-precision diamond turning as an economic finishing process.

This paper has identified the importance of aluminium alloy with a nickel-based electroless coating as the substitution of stainless steel in a precision hydro-static bearing system.

The purpose of this paper is to review recent advances in fine and ultra‐fine pitch wire bonding.

Dozens of journal and conference articles published recently are reviewed.

The problems/challenges such as possible wire sweep and decreased bonding strength due to small wire sizes, non‐sticking, metal pad peeling, narrow process windows, wire open and short tail defects are analysed. The solutions to the problems and recent findings/developments in fine and ultra‐fine pitch wire bonding are discussed.

Because of the page limitation, only brief discussions are given in this paper. Further reading is needed for more details.

This paper attempts to provide an introduction to recent developments and the trends in fine and ultra‐fine pitch wire bonding. With the references provided, readers may explore more deeply by reading the original articles.