The Airplane - Jay Spenser [124]
As their shock abates, they begin asking questions. While they have no trouble recognizing the machine before them as an airplane, they are astounded by its size and sophistication. Their wonder increases as you convey a rough idea of its speed, range, cruise altitude, and other capabilities.
Leading them around the jet, you point out its wings, stabilizers, control surfaces, and retractable landing gear. Its features and configuration make sense to them. The lack of propellers throws them at first, but they accept what you tell them about jet engines and how they work. So far so good.
Climbing the boarding ramp, you lead them into the passenger cabin, where a sea of empty seats speaks to the machine’s role. Turning forward, you usher them into the flight deck. The instrument panel’s glowing displays mesmerize them. Your explanation of those screens doesn’t entirely register, but it’s clear they understand the idea of instruments, know what the flight controls do, and grasp the concept of two-way radio communication. The gulf between their time and ours doesn’t seem so great after all.
But when you mention electronic computers and the vital roles they play, puzzled frowns break out. Those frowns only deepen as you press ahead trying to explain. Blériot’s eyebrows lift in Gallic disbelief. But it’s when you speak the word software that things fall apart.
This delegation from the past is now utterly confused. Groping for an analogy they will understand, you explain that modern jets can be topped off with fuel, oil, and hydraulic fluid. However, without a magic fourth fluid—this invisible substance called software—they can’t move an inch. Starting the engines, communicating, taxiing, and flying itself all depend on software.
Even as you say this, you know it’s a waste of breath. What has defeated you is one of the most fascinating things we humans do as a species. It’s called technology integration, and it largely explains our astonishing prowess.
Since before the dawn of recorded history, people have been taking seemingly unrelated ideas—sometimes from entirely different fields of activity—and combining them to create a whole greater than the individual parts. When this happens, one plus one can add up to considerably more than two.
This is certainly true in aviation. If you look under the skin of any sophisticated civil or military aircraft, you will find a spectrum of onboard systems (flight controls, instruments, engines, fuel, electrical, hydraulics, landing gear, pressurization, and environmental controls, among others). These systems perform critical functions and contribute to the craft’s overall airworthiness.
Each of these onboard systems evolved as a rudimentary mechanical capability dedicated to one function. It was also generally entirely separate from and unrelated to the airplane’s other functions (discrete systems). For example, the flight control system used wires routed through pulleys and around bell cranks to deflect the control surfaces when the pilot moved the control stick and rudder pedals; this system was not connected to any other airplane system.
This began to change because human ingenuity kept coming up with new ideas and clever ways to knit them all together. The result has been profoundly transformative capabilities that make modern air travel vastly safer than engineers and pilots back in the propeller era would have dreamed possible.
The invention of the humble radio altimeter in the 1930s launched one such wave of technology integration.
Inventive genius Nikola Tesla demonstrated the world’s first radio transmitter in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1893. Although Lloyd Espenscheid was only a small boy at that time, that event in his home town proved formative; he grew up fascinated by electricity.
Sent off to Brooklyn, New York, at age twelve to live with family friends, Espenscheid took