engineering

Melvill Jones

Melvill Jones is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Melvill Jones rather than just read about it. In short: Sir Bennett Melvill Jones, (28 January 1887 – 31 October 1975) was Francis Mond Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Cambridge from 1919 to 1952. He demonstrated the importance of streamlining in aircraft design.

Key takeaways

Melvill Jones belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Melvill Jones to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Melvill Jones from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Sir Bennett Melvill Jones, (28 January 1887 – 31 October 1975) was Francis Mond Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Cambridge from 1919 to 1952. He demonstrated the importance of streamlining in aircraft design. It had been known since the time of Aristotle, that a moving body passing through air or another fluid encounters resistance (aerodynamic drag), but Jones developed the ideas of Louis Charles Breguet into a refined theory to demonstrate emphatically the importance of drag to the performance of aircraft.

Origin and education He was the eldest of the three children of Benedict Jones, a barrister, and Henrietta Cornelia Melvill, the South African widow of George William Bennett. His father served as mayor of Birkenhead. Jones was born in Rock Ferry, a suburb of Birkenhead. After attending a preparatory school in Rock Ferry, he was educated at Birkenhead School from 1898–1906. He recalled having great admiration for the headmaster who allowed him to give up cricket to give him more time to work with his father on engineering projects. He graduated with a first class honours degree from Emmanuel College, Cambridge in the mechanical sciences tripos in 1909.

Early career and military service After university he worked at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich in their workshop and was there until January 1911 when he joined in the Aerodynamics Department of the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington and then at Armstrong Whitworths where he worked on the design of airships until the outbreak of war in 1914. He was then seconded to the Royal Aircraft Factory, later the Royal Aircraft Establishment, where he worked on aerial gunnery until 1916 when he was transferred to the Air Armaments Experimental Station at Orfordness, which had established by Bertram Hopkinson who was then Head of the Engineering Department at Cambridge. Whilst there, Melvill learned to fly and served as a gunner for about six weeks in 1918 in a Bristol Fighter in No. 48 Squadron RAF with his younger brother, Benedict Henry Melvill Jones, as pilot. He was awarded the Air Force Cross and promoted to lieutenant-colonel (Benedict was killed in 1918 on an experimental flight.)

After First World War In March 1919 Jones returned to Cambridge as a fellow of Emmanuel College and a member of staff of the Engineering Department. In October he was elected as the first Francis Mond Professor of Aeronautical Engineering in which position he remained until his retirement in 1952. At Cambridge, the Air Ministry provided aircraft and flying facilities to develop a successful school of aviation research. With characteristic modesty he said that he expected his small team, usually four, to work with him rather than for him. His work on stalls led to a great understanding of the phenomenon and may have greatly reduced accidents. From 1926 his work was principally connected with reducing drag. In 1929 his paper The Streamline Airplane presented to the Royal Aeronautical Society was seminal. He proposed an ideal aircraft that would have minimal drag which led to the concepts of a 'clean' monoplane and retractable undercarriage. The aspect of Jones's paper that most shocked the designers of the time was his plot of the horse power required versus velocity, for an actual and an ideal plane. By looking at a data point for a given aircraft and extrapolating it horizontally to the ideal curve, the velocity gain for the same power can be seen. When Jones finished his presentation, a member of the audience described the results as being of the same level of importance as the Carnot cycle in thermodynamics.

Second World War Before the Second World War, he was asked to return to his work on gunnery. His four years of work led to the development of the gyroscopic gunsight. In 1943 he moved to the Ministry of Aircraft Production and became chairman of the Aeronautical Research Committee (later Council) until 1946 In 1946 he resumed his work on drag. After retirement he became a consultant for the Royal Aircraft Establishment.

Honours In the King's Birthday Honours 1938 Jones was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and in the New Year Honours 1942 was appointed a Knight Bachelor. Jones was elected Fellow of the Royal Society and awarded the Medal of Freedom by the US in 1947 for his work on aerial gunnery and he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Aeronautical Society and became an honorary fellow of the society in 1951.

Personal In 1916 he married Dorothy Laxton (née Jotham) (died 1955). They had a daughter, Margaret (b 1917) and two sons, Warren (b 1920) and Geoffrey (b 1923). Warren was a pilot who was killed in action in 1940. Geoffrey Melvill Jones is a vestibular physiologist, medical doctor, and a pioneer in aviation medical research. Sir Bennett Melvill Jones was a strong swimmer and keen rock climber. He was regarded as 'one of the kindest and friendliest of men'. He died in Devon on 31 October 1975. -

See also Images at the National Portrait Gallery[1]

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Melvill Jones

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Melvill Jones claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Melvill Jones before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Melvill Jones ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Melvill Jones

In research: Melvill Jones appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Melvill Jones in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Melvill Jones is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1887 births, 1975 deaths, Alumni of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Melvill Jones outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Melvill Jones in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Melvill Jones means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Melvill Jones out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Melvill Jones in simple terms?

Why does Melvill Jones matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Melvill Jones?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Melvill Jones.