

Road-map wristwatch from 1920 - keiferski
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/roadbooks_part_4_the_wrist-mounted_original_23356.asp

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kevinconroy
Brilliant design. Quickly, someone design a mashup with Google Maps + Google
Web Fonts that spits out printable directions that work with this!

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veb
... and put it on Kickstarter!

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mediocregopher
Still waitin on that pebble

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noonespecial
There so much cool design and neat ideas that really were just ahead of their
time to be found in the past.

My suspicion is that nearly everything people are breathlessly running to the
patent office with these days thinking they've got something new, someone has
already tried to pull off with gears and little bits of paper 100 years ago.

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Olly214
They use similar roadbooks in the Paris Dakar rally for use on the motorbikes.
[http://www.sbs.com.au/blogarticle/108976/Behind-the-
Scenes-R...](http://www.sbs.com.au/blogarticle/108976/Behind-the-Scenes-Road-
Book-preparation/blog/Dakar-Dreams)

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pavel_lishin
"The glass window, an improvement on the original device as far as I can tell,
stops the paper getting wet in the rain when you are driving your convertible
sports car with the top down."

People drive in the rain with their tops down?

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tobiasu
When Britain still was an empire, they didn't just complain endlessly about
the weather. A little rain didn't deter anyone from cruising around in their
Morgan...

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jff
This would be an excellent application for a Pebble e-ink watch. I would kill
for something like this for motorcycle trips. The usual Google Maps on
cellphone navigation isn't very useful, but having a small device strapped
outside my jacket wrist with simple a nice big glove-usable button would be
great.

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mceachen
The map-on-a-scroll idea was used commonly by aviators at the time, but their
maps were strapped to their leg:

[http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/gal102/americabyair/ab...](http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/gal102/americabyair/abaImage.cfm?webID=111.p3a)

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dermatthias
Pilots now have iPads strapped to their legs. Or, that's what a friend of mine
does. It really useful (with a dedicated pilot app, not Google Maps), but they
always have a "real" GPS onboard for backup.

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bx_lr
This article is part of a series; glad to see they were aware of the two
sports that use roadbooks today:

[http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/roadbooks_part_3_r...](http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/roadbooks_part_3_rigged_for_motorcycles_23348.asp)

[http://www.core77.com/blog/graphic_design/roadbooks_part_2_p...](http://www.core77.com/blog/graphic_design/roadbooks_part_2_pacenotes_-
_sketches_that_your_life_depends_upon_23347.asp)

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mixmastamyk
Great usability. This is awesome, put a big smile on my face. Very rare for a
gadget to do that.

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jimbokun
I wonder what other old fashioned gadgets could be studied to improve the user
experience of today's software.

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JoeAltmaier
Steampunk! That's the coolest functional design I've seen all year.

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ChuckMcM
That is a cool gizmo. Lots of interesting linear steps kinds of things you
might do with it, like cooking for example, each step of the process scroll up
to the next step.

