Abstract
Most people, I suppose, have wished at some time in their lives that, having a burning desire to get something off their chest, they had a captive audience with no chance of escape and no right to answer back. The Presidency of this Institution provides the President not only the great honour of representing for a year the mechanical engineering profession but also gives him just such a captive audience. But I have to admit to a certain diffidence now that I am facing you all. Having so often felt an urge to get many things off my chest, I now find it is much more difficult than I had thought. We have come to expect from the President both some insight into what brought him to this important responsibility and also a profession of faith or at least an apologia for what he did or did not do in his engineering career.
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