Standalone navigation devices are a dying breed. These days vehicles tend to have navigators plumbed into their dashboards, and as long as there's a smartphone to hand... well, there's an app for that. Demand for the devices nosedived years ago, but the technology underpinning them is alive and well, floating out there in space. What we all know as GPS wasn't operational until the mid '90s, though this was predated by Transit, the first satellite-based geolocation network completed in the '60s. But the first automated in-car navigation system was developed long before we had the technology to put anything into space.
The concept of the modern navigator can be traced back to the early 1930s and the creation of the Iter-Auto. Manufactured by an Italian company based in Rome, the contraption was designed to be mounted to your car's dashboard and loaded with routes printed on long paper scrolls. It was hooked up to the vehicle's speedometer, and so the scroll would wind automatically in proportion with distance travelled. The maps themselves also included alerts of upcoming road features, like bridges and level crossings, as well as garages, hotels and such -- much like their digital equivalents today.
Source: Engadget
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Sunday August 05 2018, @08:04AM (3 children)
Indeed, they predate the automobile by centuries, and are still in use today. Variously known as "wife" or "back-seat driver", they do tend to offer varying levels of accuracy and politeness, but they'll be with us forever. "No, not left you idiot, I said right! Don't you ever listen to what I say? I should have listened to my mother and married that nice Jones boy, at least he could take driving instructions. Left! Right! I said right, not left!".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 05 2018, @11:44AM
You're driverless. My condolences, or congratulations.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday August 05 2018, @03:29PM
You're not really married until your wife gestures left and yells to turn right.
(Score: 3, Funny) by isostatic on Sunday August 05 2018, @07:22PM
I believe you're referring to the Sat Nag?
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Sunday August 05 2018, @08:26AM (5 children)
vehicles tend to have navigators plumbed into their dashboards,
Unfortunately being the price-gougers car dealers are are, the map updates cost more than most second hand cars, so you still have to use your phone to navigate.
Tomtom is in the same boat - map update £60. New Tomtom £60.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 05 2018, @08:53AM (2 children)
As an experienced over the road driver, I say that keeping a map up-to-date probably isn't worth more than a few cents. A dollar a year is the most I would pay for updates. Sure, you *can* run into problems with an out of date map. But, seriously, it takes two or three years to make any major change to the infrastructure. It takes a decade for those changes to add up to really meaningful changes to your routing.
Yeah, if you're trying to save the last second in your routing, then, maybe you need the very latest up-to-date mapping, plus some kind of an app giving you road conditions, speed traps, and even which donut shop is having a special today. (mmmmmm - baker's dozen Bavarian Cream donuts for five bucks - gotta stop!)
I strongly suspect that if I could find my 20 year old CD with Rand McNally maps on it, I could navigate quite well. The most likely problems would be trying to find new sub-divisions. Mary Beth's cul de sac won't be on the maps, nor Tom's Dead End Drive. But, if I know to look for Tom, I can probably call him and get directions off of Farm to Market road 1462, which has been there since about 1860. Places that haven't been built up in recent years will look just like they did fifty years ago - only the names of the stores and the names on the mail boxes will look any different.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday August 05 2018, @03:40PM (1 child)
My guess is demographic games going on where people able to afford new cars likely afford new subdivisions so all cars on the road are designed under "new subdivision" criteria where it would be unthinkable not to have a 3 year old subdivision on your map because thats where people who buy new cars live.
Kinda like the gaslighting for poor urbanites to become car-free hipsters, I'm sure their maps don't need updating when the last time their neighborhood was gentrified was 1955, but those people are too poor to buy new cars, so although they wouldn't need updated maps, they don't matter in the new car marketplace, what matters is the 'burbs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 06 2018, @12:03AM
Wait, what? Did you just call Runaway1956 a hipster?
(Score: 2) by legont on Sunday August 05 2018, @02:05PM
My aviation Garmin GPS run out of memory. If I try to update maps, it would brick it. We are talking about 500-1000 range device here. No, it's not even certified version.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday August 05 2018, @03:35PM
Built in devices also suck because they disable above 5 MPH "for safety". I'm not insane, I delegate navigation to my wife in the passenger seat while driving, so she can't use the useless in-dash system and has to use her phone to navigate, which has better live traffic data although the UI is horrific for a guy trying to drive.
If I'm driving alone I can't be distracted for seconds by a GPS, far better I'm distracted for a minute with a paper map. After all, you can't sue the printer of a map, but you can sue the maker of an in dash nav system.
Basically for legal reasons in-dash is heavily sold and advertised but is completely useless on the road, kind of our generation's tail fins on a car, I'll never waste the money on one again IF I can avoid it (which is very difficult, for some mfgrs and models)
I figure "Self driving cars" will be the same tech; hyper expensive, only works below 7 mph on closed courses can only be controlled or manipulated while in "Park" software upgrades will cost thousands or be unavailable, just plain old doesn't work. Meanwhile if you actually want to go somewhere in a car without driving, your phone has a perfectly good uber app, and uber is insanely expensive around here but cheaper than a self driving car...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 05 2018, @11:57AM (2 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro_Gyrocator [wikipedia.org]
https://web.archive.org/web/20170705130455/http://world.honda.com/tech/internavi/ [archive.org]
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday August 05 2018, @12:17PM (1 child)
The freakin' article [engadget.com], where that device is covered about halfway through (along with many others).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 05 2018, @01:42PM
Thanks for summarizing it.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 05 2018, @01:08PM
Stirling Moss famously won the Mille Miglia (~1000 mile race on public roads in Italy) with navigator Denis Jenkinson using their own scrolling map, which was in a specially made box. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_Mille_Miglia [wikipedia.org] , where some Wiki contributor has waxed eloquent:
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 05 2018, @02:48PM (2 children)
In the Goldfinger film, James Bond had a scroller map that looked like it was being projected from microfiche. That was around 1964 or so.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday August 05 2018, @03:36PM (1 child)
I'm surprised "microfiche as a moving map" never went anywhere. It seems the logical choice. My guess is the optical path is too bulky and sensitive to vibration. Also we're talking tungsten wire filaments sensitive to vibration, LED would work today.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday August 05 2018, @06:03PM
But it did, hell, back when I was in the service F-15's still used Remote Map Readers (probably replaced with digital stuff now). They were by far one of the most finicky and damaged LRU's on the bird because of all the moving parts in them.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday August 05 2018, @03:47PM (2 children)
Interesting that I can cheaply buy a completely water proofed gasketed hand held GPS for practically nothing with a sunlight readable screen that looks better the brighter the sunlight is, a battery that lasts 48 hours, and instead of hours tethered to a cable to slowly charge a battery that'll be permanently dead in 200 charge cycles, I can pop the GPS open and insert AA batteries and close it back up in maybe 30 seconds total including reboot time. My phone takes 3 minutes to boot whereas the hand held, if it had a good recent fix, is like 15 seconds to boot. Also the GPS is fairly indestructible and floats whereas the phone is "single drop only, then buy another"
A set of features like that is simply unavailable in the marketplace for smart phones but is considered standard for GPS devices despite the tech being "roughly the same".
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday August 05 2018, @07:26PM (1 child)
Does your handheld GPS have built in maps, direction finding, and traffic alerts?
Sure, if it tells you your location, maybe speed, and allows waypoint and tracking when you've been, that's great. Won't help you drive to Cousin Irene's house.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday August 08 2018, @08:07PM
Yeah everything except traffic alerts; since I don't live in urban area that isn't necessary.
The cost for updated maps was a little ridiculous.