After initial taxi trials the pilot - Gerry Sayer, the Gloster Aircraft Company's chief ... this diminutive aircraft had been fitted with Sir Frank Whittle's revolutionary gas turbine engine ...

The images show Whittle in 1948 with a model of his engine and an actual example of an engine of the type used to power the Gloster Meteor.

It was manufactured by Rolls Royce at Barnoldswick in Lancashire in 1943 and is of the type used in the RAF's first jet fighter the Gloster Meteor. It represents the start of the "jet age" of ...