AEROPLANE CONSTRUCTION

AEROPLANE  CONSTRUCTION

‘A Handbook on the various Methods and Details of Construction
employed in the Building of Aeroplanes’

by Sydney Camm

Previously owned by famed aero-engineer Sir Roy Fedden

Crosby Lockwood and Son, London. First edition 1919.  138 pages and very well illustrated with diagrams.

Near Fine condition hardback book in dark green covers with white titles. Clean, tight, square and solidly bound.  Roy Fedden’s bookplate is on the inside front cover. On the inside rear cover there is a library stamp showing that the book was also part of the company library of Roy Fedden Ltd of Cheltenham to which it was donated on 3/12/46.  The company was liquidated in in 1947. Another small stamp on the inside front cover shows that it then became part of the Institute of Transport Library in Portland Place, London. 

This is an extremely rare first edition of Sydney Camm’s ‘Aeroplane Construction‘. It is a seminal technical guide written by Sydney Camm, who would later become one of the most celebrated aircraft designers in British history. Written at the immediate conclusion of World War I, the book serves as a vital historical record capturing the transition of aviation engineering from a hobby of daring craftsmen into a rigorous, industrialized scientific discipline.

The core theme of the handbook centres around the defining challenge of early aviation: achieving maximum structural strength with minimum weight. Camm designed the text to bridge a gap he identified in existing literature, focusing heavily on standardized engineering procedures rather than just theoretical aerodynamic design.

When Camm wrote ‘Aeroplane Construction’, he was a young draughtsman and former shop-floor carpenter at the Martinsyde aircraft company. The hands-on, practical insights scattered throughout the text reflect his real-world experience building wartime aircraft. Today, Aeroplane Construction is preserved digitally on platforms like Project Gutenberg where it is studied by aviation historians as a brilliant snapshot of aeronautical technology at its dawn. Above all, the book provides an invaluable insight into the early work of one of the world’s foremost aircraft designers.

A fantastic condition copy of Camm’s only book with a splendid association with one of his contemporaries.