quick poll - american cars

Think about the gauges in Aircraft, Ships, Submarines, Industrial
equipment.I guess nowadays though, some of those gauges are digital.
My 1914 Ford Model T car doesn't have any gauges at all.
cuhulin

> wrote:
>Think about the gauges in Aircraft, Ships, Submarines, Industrial
>equipment.I guess nowadays though, some of those gauges are digital.

Pretty much all the modern aircraft being made today use digital
displays, which are called a "glass cockpit" display system. The
technology is pretty good, and a lot of development has been put into
making computer displays you can read in daylight and dark night.

The thing is, though... even the aircraft with the latest digital
technology are still required to have a limited number of old-style
instruments, which pilots disparagingly refer to as "steam gauges."
If everything goes out you can still fly. Hell, a lot of smaller planes
still use magneto spark, so that if the whole electrical system goes
out you can still fly.

>My 1914 Ford Model T car doesn't have any gauges at all.

The Piper Cub has a cork attached to a rod stuck in the gas tank.
If you look out the window during level flight and you can see the
rod out, you know you have fuel.

Because new airplanes are very expensive and the preventative
maintenance is mandated by the FAA, the average age of aircraft
flying today is pretty old. There are still plenty of DC-3s from
the 1930s in regular service today. A lot of them have been
retrofitted with modern glass cockpit instruments, too...
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."