10 Car Innovations That Were Either Ingenious or Preposterous

10 Car Innovations That Were Either Ingenious or Preposterous

Stephanie Schoppert - December 4, 2016

10 Car Innovations That Were Either Ingenious or Preposterous
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The idea of in car navigation assistance is not a new one even if GPS technology is. Back in the 1930s there was an attempt to have a navigation system in the car. This system would let you know where you were on the road and give you a glimpse of what was coming up. Looking at the device it looks like one of those old toys where you turn the knob and the picture changes. In truth, it operated in much the same way. There was a roll of paper that you would place into the device and then it would be attached to a cable that would act as a speedometer. However fast you were driving would determine how fast the scroll of paper moved. It really was an ingenious little device that could show you where you were on the map in real time as you drove down the street.

There was a slight problem that made it more than a little impractical. Each scroll of paper only worked for one street. If you had to turn down another street then you would have to remove the scroll you were using, find the scroll for the new street and then put it into the device. If you were planning a long road trip, for example, you would need to have a scroll for each road that you planned to drive on or might end up on, which would have meant carrying a large number of scrolls and being able to quickly change them anytime the car needed to turn. This idea was actually put into a design 10 years earlier, but as a navigation device that you wore on your wrist and used with a little box of scrolls that you would have to carry with you.

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