Professor Elam

Wednesday Feb 10 2010

It has been said that people can live thru all sorts of changes without ever realizing it. We are there, now. 

Consider instrumentation, well okay you probably don't think a lot about instrumentation but you should. 

Within my lifetime we have at one point, and a long point at that, known only analog, mechanical instruments. Think, Rolex or that fancy Breitling that John Travolta wears in the magazine ads. Those are mechanical watches complete with gear, springs, and all sort of pointers to indicate time in Travolta's case, goodness knows what. But it all goes back to technology that George Washington and Napoleon enjoyed. Well Rolex did make a splash so to speak by having someone swim the English channel in the 1920s to demonstrate its first waterproof watch. 

All other instruments whether monitoring Casey Jones steam engine or the Titanic boiler worked the same way. There were some hydraulic instruments but that required routing a hollow tube filled with liquid from said measuring point to the gauge, a real problem if the tube broke. 

 The electronic sending unit and now the universal LCD display panel have changed all that. At left is the electronic display panel of a Nissan GT-R. It displays no less than six readings about the car, in analog fashion on a digital readout no less. The display is no longer limited to just a digital read out. Now the display mimics the much loved analog, pointer with display, read out of the last few centuries. And depending on where one puts a sensor, one can monitor just about anything, arcane stuff like transmission temperature for example. In fact I understand that Nissan contracted this task to a video game manufacturer. 

Now fast forward to electronic tablets. See where I am going with this?  I can imagine all sorts of medical readouts like blood pressure, just put your finger in the socket ala the hospital these days, or multiple stock exchange readings or whatever. Information age, as Sarah Palin would say, you betcha!