Abstract:
INTRODUCTION
In the preparation of, this bibliography only data which has been
published after 1940 has been considered. The choice of this 'cut-off'
point seemed, reasonable on two counts: it begins a period when cockpit
displays become more varied and steadily become more complex so that the
pilot's normal capacities increasingly become a limiting factor in the
efficiency of the system: and it was in the early 'forties' that man's
capacities first began to be related explicitly to equipment design.
It would however have been presumptious to consider that no work before
1940 had any relevance; that some current principles could not be supported
or rejected on the basis of pre-war research or practice. But it is
unlikely that the pursuit of earlier work would have added anything to
the information given by Nickles (1958) in A. History of Aircraft Cockpit
Instrumentation1221:19LE. This admirable review is concerned primarily
in showing how each instrument evolved and its purpose, how information
was displayed in the cockpit and the mechanical principles employed. But
it also considers the empirical solution to implicit ergonomic problems
in this area, tracing the manner in which instruments were combined,
simplified and arranged for better presentation. In some measure it warns
against the presumption of ignoring early data for it points out that
the 'recently' evolved principle of grouping instruments in horizontal
or vertical arrays to ease the visual task of the pilot was suggested by
Doolittle in his 'fog flying' experiments in 1929 … [cont.].
