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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: 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...