The largest private wind tunnel in existence is one of the principal features of the Fairey Aviation Company's magnificently equipped laboratories, recently opened by Sir Kingsley Wood, Secretary of State for Air. This wind tunnel is the outcome of a policy under which the aircraft manufacturers will themselves do &s much research work as possible, in order to save the time and expense of sending models to the Government research centres. Messrs Fairey's research workers will now be able to test unusually large aeroplane models and apparatus in a jet of air twelve feet wide and ten feet high, moving at a speed of 145 miles an hour. The tunnel itself is an extensive. structure of wood and steel 110 feet long, 50 feet wide and 27 fe high, the power whi is needed to attain maximum wind speed being provided by a 350 horsepower motor driving a fan 14 feet in diameter. The firm has taken the opportunity to group, all its research facilities in one building. Equipment in all its laboratories is unusually complete; in the mechanical testing section are to be found machines for tensile, compressive hending fatigue, vibrational and impact testing, and among additional apparatus is a particularly ingenious machine for detecting flaws in materials. The metallurgists and chemists have at their disposal the best apparatus that money can buy, including a microscope which will magnify an object 2,000 times. It is encouraging to reflect that, although at present aeronautical research is devoted to the ion of the most lethal weapon of war yet devised, it is laying up a store of scientific knowledge which transcends international boundenes and may eventually prove to be one of the most fruitful heritages of mankind,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.