17 ms·
When you look at an older artifact (tool, airplane, source code), and ask yourself: Why did they do it this way? A lot of times, they just made things work. Th
by csours 4y ago
When you look at an older artifact (tool, airplane, source code), and ask yourself: Why did they do it this way?
A lot of times, they just made things work. They didn't understand the optimal solution or they didn't have access to resources to implement an optimal solution.
Airplanes up until the 1960s (and some beyond) had very few automatic systems because there was simply no way to automate them (aside from some mechanical computers and small amounts of electronics). The aircrew were physically moving control surfaces (sometimes with assistance) or as in this case, physically moving a knob that rotated a valve.
- stephen_g 4y agoSure, but automation wasn't so much the problem here - this was mostly a human factors/human-machine interaction problem. Quite a few people died due to similar problems over the history of aviation - here, they just needed to have the levers a bit more visible, and/or having it click into the closed position (a little notch and a spring on the lever) and it would make it very difficult to make the same error. Other times it was putting important levers too close to each other, having one warning bell that sounds too much like a different one, etc. Like much of aviation, a lot of these lessons were learnt through a lot of accidents and fatalities.