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.

Comments

Alternatively...

[freeze128]

"Windows 95 is 20 years old, and is still in use today."

That doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?

Happy Birthday

[zamboni1138]

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.

Re: Happy Birthday

[Obfuscant]

enroute crab angle Does that make you a crab person?

For those who do not know, the action of flying turned into the wind is called "crabbing", after the skittering motion of a crab across the ground. If the wind is coming from your left, then to keep a defined track across the ground a pilot will keep the aircraft yawed to the left by some angle -- the "crab angle". Adding the vectors of wind and thrust results in the correct path from point A to point B on land.

You don't usually notice this as a passenger while aloft. You will see it when you watch an aircraft land in a crosswind. To line up with the runway (a fixed track on the ground) the pilot points the nose of the airplane into the wind to cancel the sideways drift from the wind. This is the easy way to cancel that drift. It can be held for long periods of time and allows a stabilized approach.

Just before landing, pilots will kick the airplane over into a "slip", which is a deliberate mis-coordination of the flight controls. This puts the plane in a bank (using the horizontal component of lift to cancel the wind) with rudder cancelling the yaw. This is a harder technique because it requires constant control inputs, but it aligns the wheels with the direction of travel. That's good for not blowing out tires.

Nomograms

[dtmos]

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.

Re:its not a computer.

[ClickOnThis]

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*]