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The E6-B Flight Computer Is 75 Years Old, Still In Use (informationweek.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Few devices have been around this long, have had cameo appearances in Star Trek, and remain in use today. The current E6-B looks almost exactly the same as the first one manufactured 75 years ago. It was designed by U.S. Naval Lt. Philip Dalton in the late 1930s. When he completed the final version, it was introduced to the Army in 1940, and later used widely during WWII. Today is a required instrument for flight training, and has appeared on Star Trek original series several times, as Mr. Spock used a E6-B for critical calculations.
"Windows 95 is 20 years old, and is still in use today."
That doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?
I remember being 14 and learning to use an E6-B flight computer for the first time. It's pretty amazing to be able to sit down and develop a to-the-minute flight plan from departure to arrival and then be able to go out and execute that plan. Flying along hitting all your waypoints at the proper time, getting your enroute crab angle correct for the given winds aloft and not killing yourself along the way was always exciting. Hats off to Lt. Dalton. Your invention will always have a place in my flight bag.
I was musing just the other day about a related calculating method that has fallen into disuse, the nomogram. Nomograms always impressed me as an especially clever way to perform specific mathematical tasks.
When I was young, and dirt was still sparkling and shiny new, nomograms were in every engineering textbook, handbook, and reference book. Their demise in engineering applications seems to have come with a whimper, not a bang, as no one seems to have noticed it.
It's not surprising that it hasn't changed -- it's not like arithmetic has changed over 75 years.
All the available flavors, and you chose salty...
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I haven't used mine in over a decade. Even when I was leaning to fly it was very rarely needed, VORs and other electronic navigation aides made a flight computer unnecessary for most flying. GPS of course makes it even less useful. Pre-GPS there may have been areas with minimal ground based navigation aids where a flight computer was more necessary.
Its still a cool device though.
The E6B (and its smaller brethren such as the one I used to carry in my flight jacket pocket) is nothing but a circular slide rule with a couple of special index points for minutes calculations.
That said, there is nothing "just" about a slide rule. It scores as one of humanity's finest achievements.
its a stupid slide rule with a stupid carnival wheel attachment.
A computer is a device that can compute. The E6-B qualifies.
Modern usage has co-opted the term to refer to an electronic device that computes. But computers pre-date the electronic age.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Has somebody made a detailed study on the common, everyday objects used in the episodes either as is, or as parts of a larger set? I fondly remember how a painted Logitech trackball was used in the captain's chair as a controller in the Next Generation series.
In TOS, Dr. McCoy once used a "white sound" device to mask the heartbeats of the people on the bridge, so as to isolate the heartbeat of Finney in Engineering. It's easy to see that the prop was just a Shure microphone.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
That is very little of why the Soviets achieved so much, tbh - central planning did that, just as in China, but it was combined with some horrible racism and paranoia on Stalin's part. Britain ensured the death of more people in engineered famine in India, and it had very little to do with the underlying regime.
As for "human life as a commodity", the idea that everyone is someone from whom you profit - i.e. objectified by reduction to their usefulness in trade - is the core tenet of capitalism. Hell, we even have a profession for those engaged in management of such resources: "human resources". Stalinism was yet worse, but it wasn't because of the underlying economy, rather because he was a cunt.
A computer is a device that can compute...
Using that definition my hand is a computer also...
Only if it's connected to a brain.
[*crickets*]
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I'm not sure simulating the motion of s steam-piston qualifies as computing. The "result" is much closer to the elementary school volcano for science class.
Circular chart recorder is clearly visible in the shuttlecraft Galileo. These recorders commonly used for industrial HVAC and process instrumentation recorders, still in use today. It may not be "high tech" digital recorder but if power goes out, then still have hardcopy recording of what happened and be able to quickly look at measurements taken during the past 12 or 24 hours.
Using common objects as props unless really cheesy can go unnoticed if the plot or story is engaging with subject matter and character.
Speaking of common props, I remember watching Battlestar Gallacta in 1970s where they had racks of Tektronix test equipment thinking, "wow, I'd love to have some of those oscopes."
I have a E6B (buried in my junque collection someplace), bought it years ago because it looks cools, have no idea how to use it.
mfwright@batnet.com
Depends which definition you want to go with. I think these days most people would go with "an electronic device for storing and processing data," which this is not.
That said, it's actual name is still the "E6-B Flight Computer."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I count on my fingers, am I a computer?
I remember when the first test flights of the F-22 were taking place. This was the *first* US military aircraft that was to be test-flown in the internet age, outside of the black curtain (ie. in the court of public opinion). All the same cynicism present for the F-35 was present than. There was some big Windows NT angle, and some computer failure of a flight over the pacific, and everyone here (ie. one Slashot) went crazy (FRAUD!!! THEY'RE SO STUPID!!! I COULD BUILD A _STARSHIP_ FROM SHIT I PULLED OUT OF A DUMPSTER @ MIT, etc.)
Fast forward, everyone loves the F-22, and now the F-35 is boogy man. The **SAME** ppl. who ragged on the F-22, now say we should build more an cancel the F-22. The F-35, not unlike the F-22, was the first plane to be tested in the age of *social media*, where there's no shortage of experts, and ppl. that can build a starship from the shit in dumpster.
If these ppl. were running the show, we would all be driving Model-T's. Nah, they're too principled to drive cars, and they don't own a TV (but somehow, they know what a starship is....).
Hmmm....
You could be. Computer used to be a job title.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
The E6B is a rite of passage for all student pilots, but I haven't found anyone that kept using it. An electronics calculator from the 70s is much faster and easier to use in a cockpit, but despite not being part of the practical test, every designated pilot examiner wants to see every student use one, because they used one as a student.
If you're a millennial then you should know that words are rape.
As an instrument rated private pilot, I do not ever recall using one, although I certainly know what one is.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Still have a couple. Vision is good enough for the whiz wheel but not good enough to fly. :(
A computer is a device that can compute...
Using that definition my hand is a computer also...
When Alan Turing did his seminal work on computing and computability, he used "computer" to mean both a human with a pencil and paper and abstract mechanical devices generalizing and simplifying what this human computer did.
I'm with Turning on this. A "computer" is any system that computes, whether it is entirely made out of live meat, made out of meat plus mechanical, electrical, and/or electronic aids, or made purely of such aids. The term may also be applied to aids that require a made-of-meat operator (or mechanical simulation of one) in the absence of the operator.
By this definition, both slide rule s and nomogaphs qualify as "computers".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The Type D-4 Time-Distance Computer, mine is marked as being the property of the US Army Air Corp.
/. Dissent will not be tolerated. Think like us or perish.
Damn. Not only do I have one of those, I knew exactly where it was.
He could be doing calculations in his spare time.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
We could use them to plot the course of starships! What, that's already been done??
Just because it has an archaic API doesn't mean it's not a computer.
That's so true. at least the Americans would never use human life as a commodity, buying and selling people based on their colour, having a civil war about it and then finding lots of other ways to treat the same people as less then a commodity.
Americans would also never steal peoples land on the principle that they're just a bunch of savages as well, nope they found an empty continent and just moved in.
And today Americans would never blow up weddings and such on the chance that there might be a bad guy, with bad guy being defined as someone not happy with having their home blown up, in the name of freedom of course. Another thing is that American business would never move their manufacturing to 3rd world countries where workers are treated like commodities just to make more profits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
The difference between what Stalin did and what Corporations under Capitalism do would be zero, short of the gov't stepping in and actively stopping them from doing so.
Under capitalism, corporations are fine with beating, starving and enslaving their workforce, poisoning land, sea and air, really, whatever they can think of to make a little more money. Unfortunately, the US is rapidly becoming more fascist, in that corporations are literally writing the laws they want enacted, and just giving them to the politicians, who then pass them, but the voters keep reelecting them, so they must want more of the same.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
If your into this kind of thing - check out this in-depth video of how an old US Naval WW-2 mechanical computer works. Absolutely amazing - totally old-school. https://m.youtube.com/watch?fe...
I thought this article was about the flight computer used in the Prowler Electronic Attack aircraft....
Aren't they out of service? How did the aircraft get a flight computer from the 30's? How could Gene Roddenberry possibly get his hands on a (then-modern) military aircraft computer during the original Star Trek's run?
but that's the EA-6B......
You got it wrong. Churchill commented on democracy not capitalism. “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”