
Electro Gyro-Cator (1981) - martinml
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro_Gyrocator
======
jacquesm
That's pretty neat. Any idea on how accurate it was? The real breakthrough in
navigation imo is not so much the display of a map but rather the lack of
display of more data than you actually need at the moment. Turn-by-turn
navigation is what then really drove adoption. GPS may not have been necessary
to achieve this and this article is a nice reminder that there are more ways
than one to skin a cat.

Do any present day navigators use inertial guidance when they are out of reach
of satellites? (I know mine doesn't when I enter a tunnel it seems to continue
to coast based on the last known info when the signal was lost, after more
than a few minutes, for instance a traffic jam it gets wildly erratic.)

~~~
kazinator
Never mind inertial guidance; just distance traveled from the odometer would
help, based on the commonly true assumption that the tunnel is straight.

------
mvidal01
Someone in the military did a technical evaluation of the Electro Gyro-Cator.
[http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a138283.pdf](http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a138283.pdf)

Pretty interesting.

------
mistagiggles
"A marking pen was also included to help make personal indicators on the map
if needed."

It's disappointing that modern technology no longer supports being annotated
with a marker pen.

~~~
keville
Can't tell ... if trolling ... or serious.

Even Apple has gotten around to selling a stylu^H^H^H^H^H Pencil for your
tablet; Microsoft has been _pushing_ theirs for years, and Samsung uses it as
a differentiating factor on their smartphones.

------
tachyonbeam
The steampunk alternative to GPS

