I am honoured by the request of your Council to deliver the second Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecture, and for my subject have selected some points connected with the development of the aeroplane, that machine whose capabilities Wilbur Wright was among the first to recognise and which he did so much to create.

I will commence with some well–known words:—

“I have brought to a close the portion of the work which seemed to be specially mine, the demonstration of the practicability of mechanical flight; and for the next stage, which is the commercial and practical development of the idea, it is probable that the world may look to others. The world indeed will be supine if it do not realise that a new possibility has come to it and that the great universal highway overhead is now soon to be opened.”