🚗 TIL: Before GPS was fully operational, Honda built a car navigation system that used zero satellites.
In 1981, the Honda Electro Gyrocator debuted as a dealer option on the Accord. You placed a transparent plastic map over a small CRT screen and marked your starting point.
As you drove, a helium gas-rate gyroscope detected turns: helium flow shifted between two heated wires, creating a temperature difference the computer read as direction. A transmission sensor tracked distance. A 16-bit computer combined both to move a dot across the map showing your position.
Not perfect. Wheel spin and drift compounded, so you could pull over and manually realign. The IEEE designated it a Milestone in 2017 as the world's first map-based car navigation system, 14 years before GPS.
The catch: it cost about $2,746 (nearly a quarter of the car's price). It only lasted one year.
Read more:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/first-mapbased-car-navigation-system-debuted-14-years-before-gps
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro_Gyrocator
https://global.honda/en/heritage/episodes/1981navigationsystem.html
