The pilot as a passenger in the wind
The first airplane cockpits were hardly cockpits at all. On the 1903 Wright Flyer, the pilot lay face down on the lower wing, exposed to the wind, and moved a hip cradle to control the wings. The brothers soon moved to an upright seating position in later models, which made it practical to carry a passenger and to fly longer.
For the next decade or so, pilots on most aircraft sat in the open. The word “cockpit” itself is generally believed to come from the pit used for cockfighting, and it was later applied to a small enclosed space in a boat, then to an aircraft’s seating area. The origin is not fully certain, and different sources suggest slightly different routes.
The earliest controls varied widely between designers. Over time the layout settled into a familiar pattern: a control stick or a wheel (yoke) for roll and pitch, and pedals for the rudder. That arrangement was standard by the First World War, so a pilot moving from one machine to another did not need to relearn the basics.
The first instruments
Early flying relied on the pilot’s senses, with only a few instruments added. Typical early additions included an engine speed indicator (a tachometer), an oil pressure gauge, a compass and an altimeter, the last of which worked by measuring air pressure. An airspeed indicator, using a tube that faced the airflow, also became common. Their purpose was mainly to let the pilot monitor the engine and judge speed and height, not to fly through clouds.
Flying without seeing the ground or horizon turned out to be dangerous. A pilot who enters cloud can easily lose track of the aircraft’s orientation, since the inner ear gives misleading signals. In the late 1920s, instrument makers such as Sperry developed gyroscope-based instruments, including the artificial horizon and the directional gyro. In September 1929, James Doolittle made a widely reported flight in which he took off, flew a course and landed using only instruments, with a hood covering the cockpit. It showed that blind flying was feasible with training and the right equipment.
Enclosure and comfort
As speeds and altitudes rose, open cockpits became impractical. Enclosed canopies appeared on many aircraft from the 1920s and 1930s onward, which reduced wind and noise. Airliners of the 1930s had a separate flight deck, often with a captain and a first officer, and a crew member such as a navigator or radio operator in some types. Heating, oxygen supplies and later pressurized cabins allowed flight at heights where the air is thin and cold. Military aircraft added ejection seats and, later, pressure suits.
Single-seat fighters of the Second World War had compact “bubble” canopies that gave a wide field of view. For airliners, the flight deck grew into a busy room full of switches and dials, especially as engines and systems multiplied.
The crowded panel
By the 1950s and 1960s, the cockpit of a large airliner could contain hundreds of dials, switches and lights. Instruments often had to be scanned in a particular order, and pilots were trained in specific scan patterns. A complex layout raised an obvious question: how much information can a person attend to at once? That question led to the field of human factors, which still guides cockpit layout today. Many designs adopted what is called the “basic T” arrangement of the primary flight instruments so that pilots would find the same ones in the same place across different aircraft.
As radio aids appeared, pilots also received information from outside, which is part of the story of aircraft navigation aids and the growth of air traffic control. The cockpit became a place where information from many sources had to be combined.
From dials to glass
In the 1970s and 1980s, cathode-ray tube and, later, liquid-crystal screens began replacing electromechanical dials. Aircraft such as the Boeing 757 and 767 of the early 1980s are often cited as early examples of airliners using electronic flight displays, and the Airbus A320 of the late 1980s took the concept further, combined with electronic flight control. These “glass cockpits” can show the same information in a more flexible way, bring together data from several systems and automatically highlight what needs attention. Fewer separate dials meant that the flight engineer’s position could be removed on many new designs, and two-pilot crews became the norm for new airliners.
Head-up displays, which project key data onto a transparent panel in the pilot’s line of sight, also appeared first in military aircraft and later in some airliners. Small aircraft now often have glass panels too, and many include moving map displays, a feature made possible by global positioning.
What has not changed
The cockpit has changed enormously in appearance, but its aim is steady: give the pilot clear information and clear controls. Automation has handled more routine work, though debates continue about how pilots should stay skilled and alert when machines do most of the flying. As in so many areas of aircraft design, each improvement tended to follow a lesson learned from accidents or near misses.