Why then do we feel that this paper, now over 70 years old, is still worth reading? The first thing we notice, of course, is the subject matter. Vortex rings have been a subject of great fascination to fluid dynamicists for a very long time, dating back to Reynolds in 1876 [1] or even earlier to Rogers in 1858 [2], the founder of MIT. This initial interest is in part due to Lord Kelvin's idea that such rings were a model of atoms [3] (at the time Lord Kelvin was Sir William Thomson). Like many subjects in fluid mechanics, it is one where interest in the community has been up and down, but it is one in which there has always been interest. They are visually stunning phenomena, which can capture even lay peoples' interest. From a scientific perspective they pose many interesting and theoretically challenging questions. This paper was perhaps the first to study wave motion on the vortex core and to attempt to describe the initial roll-up of the fluid exiting the gun.A quick search in recent literature highlights the importance of vortex rings in the natural and manufactured world, ranging from fish swimming [4] and inter-fish communication [5] to insect flight [6] to manufactured jet propulsion [7] or robotics problems [8]. The beauty, complexity and universality of vortex rings is perhaps best summarized in the oft-quoted words of the late Phillip Saffman (1981) [9]: "One particular motion exemplifies the whole range of problems of vortex motion and is also a commonly known phenomenon, namely the vortex ring... Their formation is a problem of vortex sheet dynamics, the steady state is a problem of existence, their duration is a problem of stability, and if there are several we have a problem of vortex interactions."The second thing we would like to highlight from the Krutzsch paper is the exceptionally fine quality of the photographs. As with any good scientific paper, the high quality images convey much of the information in the article, which we believe gave rise to its interest by the scientific community despite any challenges *