It is my privilege this evening to pay tribute to one of the truly great men of British Aviation—Mr. C. C. Walker—in the centenary year of his birth.

C. C. Walker was born in Highgate on 25th August 1877, and in his boyhood there was only a limited degree of general interest in the possibility of powered flight. Most people regarded it as a Jules Verne idea—what we should today call ‘Science Fiction’.

However, his interest was clearly aroused and he had an early appreciation that the problems were soluble. In his own Reminiscences of Fifty Years of Aviation published in the Society’s Centenary Journal, he recalls a ride in Maxim’s steam-driven multiplane in 1894 and it is on record that at the age of sixteen he lectured to a boys’ club on the subject of flying. What a pity that the text has not survived.