You have honoured me and my associates in asking me to present your Sir Henry Royce Memorial Lecture. When I saw the list of my predecessors, and their contributions to aviation, I must say I have joined a very select company and can only hope that I shall be able to justify your faith.

When I first selected my title, I was not aware that the ‘Well Tempered’ description had been used previously by Arthur Raymond in his 1951 Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecture to the Royal Aeronautical Society. With sincere apologies to Mr Raymond, who was for many years responsible for engineering leadership of the Douglas Company, the selection of ‘Well Tempered’, which he derived from Johann Sebastian Bach, still seems most appropriate. I hope he will forgive me for using it again.