Some here may know of a book titled Through the Overcast, by Assen Jordanoff, a comprehensive textbook about instrument flying written in the 1930s when practical IFR was a new thing. The author goes to considerable length explaining the mechanical functioning of flight instruments of the day which, for those of us flying “steam gages,” is still 100% relevant. What’s more, modern glass instrumentation still uses pressure sensed by a pitot/static system to derive altitude and airspeed information, even if the raw inputs are processed by an ADC.
Many of us instructed at schools that had a collection of retired instruments, each with a section of its case cutaway to allow us to see its mysterious inner workings. Those helped students grasp the reality that despite their exorbitant cost they were actually quite dumb, so using them effectively required pilots to be knowledgeable regarding their operating principles and limitations (and why a gentle tap on the glass is sometimes needed). I doubt any schools today have a cutaway G5—might as well be looking at a circuitboard removed from a video game—but at least it would be obvious that glass-tapping would result in nothing more than an annoying smudge.
Of course, you already know all this; but someone else may find it interesting.
BTW, Through the Overcast is worth reading for the illustrations alone.
