
First Map-Based Car Navigation System Debuted 14 Years Before GPS - sohkamyung
http://theinstitute.ieee.org/technology-topics/consumer-electronics/first-mapbased-car-navigation-system-debuted-14years-before-gps
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TheGorramBatman
This is way older than GPS -- similar systems were out in the 20s and 30s:
[http://99percentinvisible.org/article/analog-gps-
scrolling-w...](http://99percentinvisible.org/article/analog-gps-scrolling-
wrist-car-mounted-maps-roaring-20s-30s/)

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buro9
Those maps look extremely similar to UK canal maps:
[http://www.macclesfieldcanal.org.uk/mcmap3.htm](http://www.macclesfieldcanal.org.uk/mcmap3.htm)

These tended to be made into an almost straight line and printed on a single
piece of paper with notable junctions and features only.

It would've been obvious at the time that the format would be ideal for fixed
routes that these could be scrolled.

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helb
Something similar is often used for railway lines. Even Wikipedia has it on
some pages, eg.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Eastern_Main_Line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Eastern_Main_Line)

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Animats
The helium-gas rate gyroscope [1] is very strange. Honda's history says that
it was built because it had only eight parts. It's a helium jet aimed at a
pair of hot-wire anemometers. It wasn't a very good rate gyro, but it was
cheap.

Etak had a rate gyro with a motor spinning a flexible metal disk, with the
flexing sensed capacitively. I still have one of those somewhere. That was
simple and cheap too, but still not very good. All these things had far more
drift than even low end modern IC gyros.

[1]
[http://world.honda.com/history/challenge/1981navigationsyste...](http://world.honda.com/history/challenge/1981navigationsystem/page03.html)

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hackcasual
Video of it in action:
[https://youtu.be/hOqig8rixOU](https://youtu.be/hOqig8rixOU)

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EEGuy
Not much later, and with its own completely different tech for auto
navigation, came the Etak Navigator /
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etak). A
good bit of SV history there.

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niftich
There was recently a very good HN thread on Etak [1] including comments from
people who've seen it firsthand or have worked on related ventures.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13744825](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13744825)

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agumonkey
Also the road embeded tracking wire in the 50s. New is old.

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jacquesm
Another option: magnets every so many units of distance.

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dafrankenstein2
cool

