One of the difficulties in giving a talk on flight instrument displays is that everyone in aviation seems to be an expert on this particular subject—or at least everyone has such fairly violently held prejudices that new ideas tend to be automatically opposed and are certainly viewed with suspicion. I am no exception although, of course, I consider my prejudices to be calmly reasoned opinions. Accordingly, being nominated by my Commanding Officer to address this test pilots’ group I swam into the literature on the subject— and there are fathoms of it—to find that most of my “new” ideas have been put forward before and, not only that, have often been rejected on pretty good grounds.

In fact, insofar as instrument displays are concerned, history is anything but bunk and, quoting C. G. Grey of Aeroplane fame, “history is the greatest plagiarist and repeats itself to such an extent that if you knew all history one would never make a mistake in life because one would know all the mistakes that had been made”. And as you know, the difference between plagiarism and research is that if one steals ideas from more than one person, it is research.

I hope to show that many of the latest ideas on displays have been previously tried but not pursued until later technological developments made their use necessary and possible. I also hope to put forward some of my ideas on this subject.