Quote Originally Posted by Mayhemxpc View Post
The E-6B is actually the back side of the computer. That is a graphic representation of the wind triangles and does a very good job of helping the pilot to understand what the wind does. The front side was originally called the Dalton Ded-Reckoning Computer. It is a circular slide rule and involves all of the estimation skills of a regular slide rule. Besides, if Mr. Spock in Star Trek TOS is using one in the 23d century, it must have some value.
What's your source on that Chris? Slow day at the flight school one day and we had several people researching the history of mechanical flight computers from every imaginable angle (no pun intended). They have been called by a dozen different names, even three variations for E6B, also written as E-6B and E6-B. Dalton didn't call his the E6B, the "E" names came several yrs later from the Army Air Corps, E-1, E-1B, etc. E6B became the default name during WWII (A WWII pilot once told me it got the "six" name because it performed 6 basic flight calculations-anecdotal evidence only). I have come across flight computers that did not have a graph for plotting wind triangles, time speed distance on one side, TAS on the other side and those too are called E6B. There are some pretty unique flight computers that show up on eBay from time to time.

Interesting in the Star Trek episode is Leonard Nimoy is using the calculator side. Could the Vulcan brain not do simple arithmetic? But then the wind drift side would be pointless in space?
Leonard Nimoy was an avid general aviation pilot so I'm curious if he and Gene Roddenberry consulted before using the E6B prop. There is an episode where Capt. Kirk, signed a glass faced tablet with his finger which makes Gene Roddenberry one of the greatest visionaries of all time, basically predicting an iPad tablet device!!!