Bose, a good point.
I recall this posting form many years back:
The IMC rating was introduced a few years before I learned to fly in 1970. Before that time, a PPL was entitled to fly IMC outside controlled airspace, despite there being no provision for any sort of instrument flight training in the PPL syllabus at all. Concientious PPL's who wanted to improve their I.F. skills would do some dual with an instructor in simulated IMC (under the hood) and even practice instrument approaches which were VDF letdowns (if anybody remembers them!).
The powers that be decided, shortly before I learned to fly that this was not a good idea! There had probably been some accident statistics where pilots had gone IMC without any form of instrument training and suffered for it, so, at a stroke the IMC priveleges of all PPL's were removed. To get them back, an IMC rating had to be obtained and the training to do this was based on the fact that, apart from a set of "blind flying instruments" the aircraft concerned was equipped with only a VHF radio transceiver.
10 hours flying by sole reference to instruments was required including full and limited panel manoeuvres. A candidate also had to have carried out an appropriate pilot interpreted let down. (usually a VDF one) to the satisfaction of a QFI and I think experience in carring out a surveillance radar approach was required as well. As loads of pilots were expected to acquire an IMC rating to regain their lost IFR priveleges, all QFIs were empowered to carry out the test which included a written part. Here there was no formal exam paper, the candidate had to prove to his instructor that he could prepare an IFR flight outside controlled airspace.
As few aircraft in those days were equipped with anything other than a VHF radio (and maybe one VOR receiver), the training requirements were designed with this in mind. This means that over the years, us pilots who obtained our IMC ratings in those days have subsequently had to learn how to carry out ILS and ADF approaches, holds and all the other contents of the I.R. syllabus!
Oh - one other thing: you couldn't qualify for an IMC rating unless you had a total flying experience in excess of 100 hours.
It demonstrates not only how much flying has "evolved", but also how the IMC rating has "evolved" in that time - the point I think IO is making.