Dr. Tom Sadeghi

The forerunners of aerospace transistors came along in the late 1950s and 1960s and supplanted thermionic valves for many applications. The improved cost-effectiveness of transistors led to the development of digital aircraft systems throughout the 1960s and 1970s, initially in the military combat aircraft where it was used for Nav/Attack systems. For many years, the application of electronics to airborne systems was limited to analogue devices and systems with signal levels and voltages generally being related in some linear or predictive way. This type of system was generally prone to heat soak, drift and other non-linearities. The principles of digital computing had been understood for a number of years before the techniques were applied to aircraft. Size was the main barrier. The first aircraft to be developed in the US using digital techniques was the North American A-5 Vigilante, a US Navy carrier-borne bomber which became operational in the 1960s. The first aircraft to be d