Science: Pictures for Pilots

As the speed of aircraft increases, the strain on the pilot's judgment increases even faster. A good part of the trouble, thinks Commander George W. Hoover of the Office of Naval Research, is that the aircraft's swarm of instruments make their reports in figures, usually the positions of needles on round dials. The pilot's brain, however, is designed to work with pictures taken from a visual world. Before the instrument readings mean anything to it, the brain must transpose and combine them into something like a visual picture. It takes time for the brain to function as a rather slow computer,...