The Instrument Industry and Aircraft Development

THE importance of instruments is nowhere more vital than in aircraft engineering and the science of flying. Indeed, the rapid progress in design made by aeronautical instruments in the last twenty years has to a large extent determined the phenomenal advances made in the achievements that are now being accomplished with aircraft. Not only are a large variety of precise instruments required for researches into the properties of raw materials and alloys, but accurate monitors and gauges are essential throughout every stage of construction from the minutest part to the built‐up member. In the finished aircraft, instruments become the eyes, cars, tongue and nervous system of the machine; as the practice of blind flying, intercommunication and beam landing so adequately demonstrate. A peep into the cockpit of a modern aircraft discloses, to the uninitiated, a collection of instruments of bewildering assortment, and it is for good reason that the Air Ministry, in the training of pilots, lay considerable stress on the instrument side of the science of flying. Not less in control rooms, beam stations, etc., instruments in the hands of skilled operators, play a major part in controlling, guiding, computing and the manifold tasks that are co‐incident with major actions. Although these facts are apparent to all the full extent of the essential nature of instrumental control is not adequately appreciated, except by a few, and we must necessarily wait until the end of the war before a full expression of the manifold uses and high order of precision that has been attained can be permitted to be published.