A completely analog car navigator? Ford tried 60 years ago, although the idea lacked a boil …
Humanity has been dreaming of everyday inventions that we use today for centuries. This may be when autonomous cars become a reality, but in the 19th century there were already projects to create “horseless carriages“.
Something similar happens with GPS navigators. It is a technology that seems science fiction: several satellites in orbit triangulate the position of your car, or mobile, in real time. But calculate the position of a vehicle on a map, it was something that they were already trying to do even before the invention of GPS.
This is the Ford Aurora, a prototype of a family vehicle presented by the pioneering North American brand, in 1964:
The Ford aurora, which was never marketed, was a rather peculiar vehicle. It was divided into three independent compartments, separated by a soundproof glass.
On one side there was the driver’s and passenger’s cabin, on the other a comfortable sofa in the center, and in the back the play area for enclose to the children, with the aim that they do not disturb.
As the compartments were separated by the mentioned glass, the Ford Aurora had such peculiar functions as a communicator that allowed the driver to communicate with children, in the back.
But, as he tells us Auto Bild, the Ford Aurora went down in history as the first vehicle to incorporate a position indicator navigator … in 1964! That was 30 years before GPS was available for civilian use.
The first satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched by Russia in 1957, just 7 years earlier. The Gps It was developed as a military invention in the mid-1960s, but its civil use was not allowed until the 90s of the 20th century.
The first car with a GPS navigator was the Madza Eunos Cosmo, released in 1990.
In 1964 there were no GPS, no commercial computers, no mobiles. Then, How did this ford navigator work?
Well, the truth is that … it was completely analogous, and hardly precise in its results.
It was simply a paper map and a plastic pointer that moved on the map, depending on the movements of the car. That is, it took into account aspects such as speed and turns of the vehicle to calculate the position completely manually.
It was an imprecise system and open to countless failures when interpreting sharp turns, braking, changes of direction, etc., so it surely never would have worked out right.
But the Ford Aurora was a prototype, and this navigator, little more than a concept that was never developed.
We are left with the idea of a navigator for the car, 25 years before its invention. Technology always ends up making dreams come true …