TomD
+1, though there is a difference between what you do when the numbers are knowable and not. Part of the reason we have the feel is because we can't measure. But as time goes by many things are increasingly measurable. Take watches for instance (or wherever time lives these days). Forget whether one prefers hands aesthetically or not, one can quite easily work with hands and no numbers. But when digital watches came along, and we got time displayed to at least the second, that was fine also. And it was superior on occasions where seconds work. I don't want my microwave to time stuff with hour and minute hands, though a sweep second hand would be usable.

In golf it is great fun to just look at the target, feel the club and environment and make a swing. But if you have a caddy who gives you precise yardage, or a laser range finder, it changes how you play. The average golfer will have much higher scores.

If there were hand planes with precise knobs, and digital displays, that would be great. I would like to add digital displays to my milling machine and I certainly am not pulling the dials and replacing them with hammers. What I like about a Japanese plane is that given that actual useful hand planes beyond a block of wood don't actually exist, I prefer the intuitive fast to cycle one, to one that just seems badly designed, no mater how 19th century state of the art the technology might seem.

So if I could adjust all the parts of my plane to the thou, and have displays, I could probably pretty quickly get some useful results from it.