Many hundreds of readings are needed to produce an/-table and some degree of automation is required to save time and overcome the tedium of doing the work manually. For this, a remote indication of angle is required, which is generally achieved by means of shaft encoders. These are capable of measuring to the nearest 0.1 ° of arc without having to resort to gearing, which is necessary with magslips. Also, they can be used to feed the signal to a computer.