21 
TECHNICAL EXHIBITION 
Opened by the Rt Hon The Lord Brabazon of Tara 
on Tuesday, 6th September, 1960 
The President: Ladies and Gentlemen, we are greatly privileged to have with 
us this afternoon the Right Honourable The Lord Brabazon of Tara, and I am delighted 
to welcome him on your behalf. It is a pleasant duty for me to introduce him to you, 
though indeed he needs very little introduction to anybody. 
Lord Brabazon’s connexions with aviation date back to the first decade of this 
century. In 1909 he became a licenced flying pilot; he held then, and still holds, the 
first licenced pilot’s certificate ever issued in this country. Since then his activities in 
aviation have not only been of great importance and interest but they have been ex 
tremely numerous. Were I to attempt to relate even a small part of them to you 1 might 
indeed fascinate you, but I should defeat the object of this afternoon’s gathering, which 
is to listen to him. However, I must just add one more word: his association with air 
photography, and with photogrammetry also, dates back a very long way. As long ago 
as World War I a party of three men - a Mr Campbell, a press photographer and a 
probationary second lieutenant, a Mr Victor Laws whom we all know, then a sergeant, 
and a Mr Moore-Brabazon of the Reserve of Officers, in charge of this party — organ 
ized and put into action a scheme for using air photography on the Western Front. 
Two of them are here today. 
1 have great pleasure in inviting Lord Brabazon to address us and declare open 
our exhibition of instruments. 
The Rt Hon The Lord Brabazon of Tara: General Brown, Ladies and Gentle 
men, I deem it a very great honour to have been asked to open this International Ex 
hibition. It is the first of its kind that we have held in this country, and you know that 
all things international are basically good. I have no doubt that those of you who are 
showing apparatus and those of you who are giving papers and are interested in the 
subject will, for the first day or two, look at your rivals from other countries with 
suspicion and mistrust, but at the end of a fortnight I hope you will be close friends 
talking about the things that interest you all, and that that friendship will surpass 
national barriers and remain with you all your lives. 
This is an exhibition of photogrammetry; having all the talent in the world 
assembled in London, do you think you could get together and invent a better name? 
It is a frightful word and unless you are really in the racket you do not know what it is 
all about — measurement by photography. 
I was delighted to be asked here by my very dear old friend, Victor Laws, be 
cause we have known each other for a long time, since the First World War. We were 
intensely wrapped up together then over aerial photography. Unlike myself he kept on 
the narrow path and has been interested in it ever since. I must confess that I degenerat 
ed and became a Member of Parliament for twenty years during which time I did not 
keep up with this great secret. As a consequence, when I am shown around a remark 
able exhibition of apparatus as I was this morning, although I try to look intelligent and 
wise most of the apparatus is pure Greek to me. Victor Laws, on the other hand, under 
stands it all. 
I fully understand that 1 am not addressing you here on the basis of merit but 
purely on the basis of longevity. I have succeeded in avoiding the traffic of London and 
in avoiding the various bugs which destroy us even more lethally now; I have avoided 
them for no less than seventy-five years which I consider, from my point of view, to be 
a very remarkably feat. When I look round this room I am struck by the fact that I