The Automotive Body Engineer in AIRCRAFT

WHEN the automotive engineer enters the aircraft industry, he is confronted immediately with different engineering methods, with new and strange materials, and with unfamiliar manufacturing methods and process operations which are in use with these materials, and he must become thoroughly conversant with these differences and the reasons for them before he can undertake to make a valid contribution, is the contention of Mr. Widman. "I know of no phase of engineering in which a varied knowledge is so essential as it is in aircraft," he says, and he lists as desirable some knowledge of heat-treatment, structural and electrical engineering, hydraulics, metallurgy, and chemistry. Mr. Widman contrasts the automotive and aircraft industries throughout his paper and concludes that the present war experience will have a lasting effect upon the automotive industry, perhaps leading to the entrance of the automobile manufacturer into the aircraft field.