ROSE POINTS

• * * * ROSE POINTS

SIR, Keith Howard’s Technofile article on Rose joints credits German aircraft engineers for invention of this device. We can assume the Messerschmitt was

Gilles Villeneuve No 2 in all time top 100? Surely some mistake?

developed in the mid-thirties before the war. At the same time, Harry Ferguson was working on his tractor in Belfast; implements and drawbar were connected to the hydraulically operated lifting mechanism using spherical couplings which we would now describe as large `rose joints’.

Who was first? Perhaps the Germans provided the screwed adjustment, or was it like other things mechanical, just part of a gradual development?

I AM, YOURS, ETC. JB EMERSON, &MUSSON, BELFAST