Sam Goldwasser wrote:
The analog and digital displays share the same space as in
Coherent's Fieldmaster:
http://www.cohr.com/Lasers/index.cfm...id=254&loc=830

It's hard to tell from the small picture, but it looks like the meter
scale is part of the LCD. That seems interesting, especially if there
are different scales on the LCD for different ranges. In other words,
when you set it to "foo x 10", the "0...10" scale lights up, and when
you set it to "foo x 1000", the "0...1000" scale lights up. The other
day, I played with a small Omron industrial timer that works this way...
the hash marks and setting pointer are dimensionless, but there are
little windows by the major hash marks. As you turn a switch to set
the range of the timer, the current value for that hash mark appears
in the window. There was also a window for the units, which would
change from seconds to minutes to hours by moving another switch. All
of the indications were done mechanically.

Having a scale like this would seem to fix a common problem of new analog
meter users: which scale to read and what to multiply it by. The reading
is still indicated by the moving needle, but the scale can be read
directly. Of course, the Coherent meter also has the direct digital
readout to eliminate this problem, but this might be an interesting way
to build a meter with just an analog display.

Matt Roberds