Surface Films and Lubrication

Abstract

When the Council of the Society did me the honour to invite me to deliver the Wilbur Wright Lecture I found myself in a dilemma. Many of those whose lives are concerned with engineering or with scientific research must feel, as I do, that after a certain stage they cease to be quite the real thing. The realities of the workshop give place to a daily round of files, reports and estimates, and the laboratory knows one only as a visitor.When a man has entered upon this ink-stained path and is invited to give a public lecture, there are only two things he can do, except refuse. He must either plagiarise or generalise. Of the two, on grounds of morality, I prefer the latter; but it has the disadvantage common to most moral alternatives, it is much the more difficult. For myself, too, there is a further complication, because the field in which I might feel qualified to generalise would be on some subject relating to engines and their development.