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Industrial manufacture is the principal source of our national wealth, and it supports all our other activities; consequently its wellbeing is of crucial importance to us all. It has been developing in three main streams — process manufacture, flowline or mass production, and batch manufacture — and of these only the first has kept in step with the parallel development of society. In the others, the trends of management organization and the work patterns which this has created have been steadily veering into conflict with the values, aspirations and expectations of the people who have to make the industrial system work. The effects are visible now, and unless the patterns are changed, large sectors of industry could eventually become unworkable, because the qualities and skills needed in an individual are unlikely to be combined with a willingness to do the type of job offered. An account of the present position and possible directions of change in flowline and batch production is given, which satisfy the dual criteria of providing improved efficiency and a better match with society.

This paper is an overview of work done in a project in the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center which deals with the use of a computer‐controlled machine which can be programmed to do a wide variety of mechanical assemblies. Examples drawn from the application domain might be domestic utensils such as blenders and toasters, industrial examples are carburettors or power tools, while office examples are staplers, typewriter subassemblies, printer head assemblies and keyboards, etc. It is believed that a system capable of doing all of these assemblies would be industrially valuable.

This book is intended to be a comprehensive work of reference on the subject of radio aids to civil aviation. It is not written for the circuit designer or routine operator requiring detailed information on existing aids but rather for the system designer and operational planner. To this end it gives systems information required by the radio engineer or operational specialist. The inclusion at an early stage of some one hundred and fifteen pages devoted to the basic principles of radio propagation, radar, etc., assists those having a nodding acquaintance only with radio engineering to a better understanding of the later sections of the book; besides presenting a number of nomograms, graphs, and formulae directly useful to the systems designer.

Probleme des Plastizitätsthcorie (Problems of the Theory of Plasticity). By William Prager [Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel and Stuggart, Sf 12.50].

Workers in Artificial Intelligence are developing advanced methods of control of robot devices, far removed from anything currently finding practical application in industry. A great deal can be done in industry with very simple automation, but the simple equipment is less adaptable than is desirable. The conditions under which the advanced ideas on robotics may find practical applications are discussed in this paper. They are applicable when the environment is unpredictable and for any one of a number of possible reasons human guidance is unavailable. Applications in space exploration and in the military field are considered, but it is shown that there are extremely important applications much closer to home. It is argued, in fact, that robotics may well be the key to an energy‐conserving and material‐conserving technology which may be vital to the future of civilization.

Our objective, when reporting on a series of research projects conducted between our two management centres, UMIST and INSEAD, was firstly to comment upon our European experiences against the background of the changing world. Our second concern was to express, in terms acceptable to us, that production management is at the core of our interest and that, as researchers, we could not accept the great technical predominance that has characterized the teachings of those concerned with production technology. As observers of the changes in the social framework we are aware of the attention given to production problems by sociologists, psychologists and industrial anthropologists and, like interested technicians, we follow and occasionally applaud, their discoveries. Like those with day‐to‐day production problems we try not to be carried away with novelty and, as a result, one of our major tasks has been to remain ‘in touch’ with those in production departments throughout Europe, who have the responsibility of earning the nation's living. It is, after all, these people who are the concern of governments, unions and managers.

INVESTIGATIONS into the nature of high speed flow have now been in progress alto‐gether for thirty years, and at a particularly intensive rate during the past ten years. Many of the problems which troubled early workers have now been solved, certain methods of treatment have been developed to a high degree and interest has shifted to new types of problem and new techniques. A stage has been reached when it is appropriate to review the progress made and to point out those fields which remain to be examined. In this and succeeding articles advances in a number of branches of the subject are described. The account is by no means comprehensive and has been limited to those fields in which work remains to be done, which bear some relation to aircraft or rocket design and of which, at the same time, the author has some direct experience, however limited.

In late 1946, Mr. D. S. Harder of the Ford Motor Company introduced the word automation. Shortly after, much was said about the application of the principles of automation to the construction of a completely automatic factory. June, et al conducted a survey of the leading industries in the United States and reported on some of the problems that would have to be solved before an automatic factory could become a reality. Diebold wrote on the problems of automation and its implications for the businessman and his future decisions. He cites what was perhaps the first automatic factory: a continuous process flour mill, built in 1784, near Philadelphia, by Oliver Evans. No human labour was required after the grain was received at the mill until the finished product, flour, was removed. It is also interesting to note that in the early 1800's there were thousands of programmed looms operating in France, controlled by punched paper cards.

The discussion on quality of working life begins with job design. This is clearly a field where engineers must be involved: to design the workplace according to the best ergonomic principles and keep the technical options open to facilitate the humanisation of work. Ergonomics and social science are essential in training professional engineers to enable them to contribute to the quality of working life.