In his Presidential Address, Captain A. M. A. Majendie emphasizes the value of the Institute in preserving the essential link between theory and practice. Particularly in aviation there is a risk that the ingenuity of the designer will lose value unless it is directly associated with the practical work of the operator. As airborne equipment becomes more complex, the operator cannot hope to grasp more than the fundamentals of much of the theory behind it, and his criticisms must perforce be tentative and somewhat uncertain.