The Queen Mary 3
July 13, 2015
I have no idea why dials appeal to me so much. I’m not even comparing them in my mind to digital displays. I just love them for themselves. These are more in the Queen Mary’s engine rooms. I also like the muddled look here. Not that I’m not a fan of clean graphical interfaces in my own practical world. But look what I found on the Internet: “[T]here is something to be said for mechanical dial indicators. I have seen QC inspectors make consistently accurate go/no-go readings with dial indicators before the pointer has stopped moving. At a glance, they can tell approximately where the pointer will stop. This accuracy is close enough for many applications. Digital displays don’t give users the option of approximating.” The article from which I took these sentences goes on to pretty much favor digital readouts, but I’m glad to know there is still some advantage somewhere to lovely dials. Of course the article says nothing about the value to the machine operator of seeing pipes and wheels and wires in the foreground and background. Maybe that joy is reserved for some of us photographers.
Romancing Reality 