<----- Back to Dashboard

All I need to go back to my dashboard is my car key. Just out of curiosity, have you ever wondered where the term dashboard came from? I just barely thought of that. Dashboard--a board that you dash against something, like a tree or a buffalo? How about something that you grab onto when you dash someplace? I've done that second one! Now, some cars come built with "Oh Crap" handles built into the dashboard for just such occasions. Seriously, why do we call them dashboards? A dashboard in the sense of the Internet and computing is a place where you have controls for something (gee, the same as in a car), but then there's also a Control Panel, which is what is common to both Windows and Linux operating systems. (Sorry, a little Geek-ese there.) And besides that, if I were in one of those sci-fi movies controlling a starship and I went to the control room, I would walk up to a control panel, not a dashboard. I can just see it now: The USS Second-prize blasting its way through the black abyss of space with her captain controlling her from behind the dashboard of his 1987 Chevrolet Celebrity. Hey, it has all the controls needed for starship operation: speedometer, gas gage, warp speed selection indicator (PRNDL) and direction control. Hmmm. I wonder if starships have a neutral setting... ...or for that matter if they are manual or automatic transmission. NO!! Even the USS Second-prize would have a control panel rather than a dashboard. It's more sexy to say "Control Panel" than "Dashboard."

Anyhow, I was just wondering about that. If any of you have a solution for me in my wondering state of stupor, please help me out.

Come to think of it, that thing that Data sits behind on Star Trek TNG looks suspiciously like a dashboard...

And where the heck are the seatbelts in the Enterprize? Ralph Nader would have a heyday with that design. So unsafe to shoot through space at multiple warp speeds with no passive restraint system.

TTFN