It also changes the perception that some civil airplane models are very old. E.g. “the cessna” Cessna 172’s earlier version Cessna 170 was introduced in 1948, and it’s still in production with updates. A model from 1956 and 2025 looks nearly identical at first glance.
The Cessna 172 itself dates to the 50’s.
Yes, 170 is from 1948, 172 with different gears is from 1956
I don’t think you’d mistake a '56 172 with a '25 172S even at casual glance; until 1960 they had a more upright vertical stabilizer and until 1963 they had the “fastback” tail cone rather than the lower tail cone with “Omni-Vision” rear window. At that point you arrive pretty much at the anatomically modern Skyhawk airframe. We fully arrive at modernity in 1977 when they switch to the 4-cylinder Lycoming and pre-selectable flaps.
Then they stopped making them for ten years, and in 1996 they resumed production with the R model and I’m unaware of any significant changes to the hull since. They’ve offered the Lycoming IO-360 in two different de-ratings, they briefly offered a turbo-diesel though I don’t know how many of those actually made it to customers, and they went from steam gauges to Garmin glass panels, the latter of which is available for retrofit, so to tell you the age of any Skyhawk made during my lifetime I’d have to look at the hull number.
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2501/
I have the same feeling with games…
nah, that one’s accurate.
And if you go back to 70 years:
It’s the myth of progess, Lithium batteries, 1950s, same for microwaves etc. This artcle touches on it
The problem is that for me “50 years ago” is 1950, not 1975. Human brain is weird.
