Don't forget to clean up after you

Citation

Loughlin, C. (1998), "Don't forget to clean up after you", Sensor Review, Vol. 18 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/sr.1998.08718daa.001

Don't forget to clean up after you

Don't forget to clean up after you

This issue is one of contrast. The theme is "Magnetic sensors" and we have fascinating contributions from both ends of the complexity spectrum. All show great ingenuity but some, such as the articles on NMR and GMT depend on high technology semiconductors fabrication techniques for their success while the spiral inductive position sensor is brilliant in its simplicity. Treading the middle ground we have clever Hall effect designs and, for a bit of variety away from magnetism, the Oxford Sensor Technology 3D scanner demonstrates the old Edison quotation that genius is "One part inspiration and nine parts perspiration".

"Magnetic sensors" may not, at first, sight appear to have a lot to offer an industrial engineer making plastic widgets. However, the articles in this issue demonstrate the all-pervasive nature of magnetism and a very broad application base that is being expanded all the time.

While necessity may be the mother of invention, the name of the prodigy is simplicity. But we should not dismiss a technology or approach simply because we do not understand it or because it looks complex. Simplicity and beauty can occur at many levels and an atomic interaction of spin levels is just as valid as a 30mm diameter lens spinning off-axis. A complex system or structure can contain simplicity at its core without itself being simple or even particularly elegant.

Product or technological evolution usually follows a complexity curve that rises steadily during initial development and then falls to some acceptable (we hope) level. I have noticed this from both my own work and that of many others, and it is probably inevitable and rather obvious that this should be the case. Less obvious is the great benefit that can be obtained by deliberately leaving out many of the features and "benefits" that were developed while the complexity curve was rising.

To take a software analogy: when a new package is being developed, it is customary to include diagnostic aids and features that are useful at the time for helping you move on to the next stage, but which then become more or less redundant. The trouble is that having spent months creating a fancy serial communications debugging monitor, of which you are justly proud, it is very difficult to bring yourself to throw the whole lot in the waste bin. And so it gets retained; it may only be a menu option and the end-user may never need to use it, but it is still there and as such it detracts from the final system rather than adding to it.

Having struggled long and hard to attain simplicity at the centre of our creations we then need to turn around and critically view the debris that is scattered along the path.

Clive Loughlin