Originally Posted by
vapilot2004
I did not know until the other day of his father's role in developing Concorde's analogue FBW - which is what started the conversation on the Ziegler clan.
Henri Ziegler (BZ's father) was, like his son in the case of the A320, the nominal head of the French end of the project, but I've seen no evidence whatsoever that he had any direct involvement in the systems design (which was very much a collaborative effort).
I agree with your statement earlier regarding linked sidesticks and the technology limits being the primary reason it was not attempted at the time. Makes perfect sense.
That's not the only reason though. The "clean room" thinking was that with an all-hydraulic control setup and with only one flight crew member being PF at any given time, there was no real need to backdrive or connect the flight controls in the manner of earlier designs.
The head of the A320's pilot engineering team was the late Gordon Corps, who had previously been the successor to D.P. Davies (of "Handling The Big Jets" fame) at the ARB.