Many modern drivers take their navigation systems for granted. You can get directions to just about anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice from the tiny supercomputer in your pocket. Obviously, that wasn’t the case in the 1930s when cell phones were decades from existence, and humans were decades from the first satellite. The limits of technology, however, didn’t stop one firm from inventing a very early form of car navigation. This is the Iter Avto, the 1930s metal box that used paper scrolls and your car’s speedometer to tell you how to navigate.
Humans have been concerned with navigation since as far as we can tell. One of the oldest known surviving map-like objects in history is a mammoth tusk with what is believed to be a sort of map engraved into it. How far does that date back? 25,000 BCE. Even paper maps date back well into BCE.
As Hagerty writes, the first successful road atlas was ‘A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America,’ which was printed onto plates by Christopher Colles of New York in 1789. Rand McNally, a name iconic for maps today, printed its first map in 1872, and that was a railroad map.
Hagerty notes that one of the first truly useful maps for motorists was ‘The Official Automobile Blue Book,’ which was published in 1901 by Charles Howard Gillette. This wasn’t exactly a map as we know them today, but a sort of dead reckoning navigation. The book had you navigate by starting at a point, driving a certain distance, turning at a point, and driving more distance. It was inexact, and if something changed that the book didn’t know about, such as a landmark, you were screwed. You were also lost if you didn’t have an accurate way of tracking mileage.
Still, the guide became immensely popular, so much so that AAA would become its official sponsor. But the Blue Book wasn’t the only game in town. In 1904, Rand McNally got into the business of road maps for car drivers.
One of the next biggest steps forward in navigation was figuring out how to take the sort of turn-by-turn directions introduced by the Blue Book, combining it with an accurate map, and scaling it down to an easy-to-digest size. One of those was the Iter-Auto, and it was an automated navigation system all the way back in 1931.
Automating Maps
Possibly the first automated turn-by-turn car navigation system was the 1909 Jones Live Map by J. W. Jones. How Jones pulled it off was that he printed directions on paper discs. Those discs were then connected to a car’s odometer. As the odometer turned, so did the disc, and an arrow would highlight your next driving instruction.
This was a big deal in the era. Sure, America’s road network was nothing like how it is today, but America’s automakers were churning out more than 75,000 cars a year by this point, and people wanted to figure out how to get from one city to another.
In 1921, John J. Bovy was granted a patent for a novel car navigation system. Bovy’s invention consisted of a box, inside of which sat a map printed on a scroll. That scroll was wound around two spools, which were tensioned with springs. As you drove, you were supposed to spin the scroll. Ideally, this meant that you had a more immediate idea of where you were, but this depended on your moving the map accurately.
The next big jump came in the form of the “Plus Four” Wristlet Route Indicator & Golf Scorer from England in 2927. This device was similar to Bovy’s invention, but the creators of the “Plus Four” Wristlet Route Indicator & Golf Scorer managed to scale the map scrolls down to about the size of a watch face. These tiny scrolls were loaded into the box, and the person wanting to navigate somewhere would wear the navigator like a watch.
The tiny road maps, which came in a cute box with the watch, had set routes, such as London to Bournemouth and London to Edinburgh.
The Iter-Auto
Combine all of these ideas together, and you get Iter-Auto by the Touring Club Italiano of Rome, Italy. Made in 1931, this device utilized a little bit of everything that we talked about thus far. It was a turn-by-turn road map, but scaled down, put into scroll form, and placed in a metal box. The scrolls were made out of paper, and the spools were made of wood and metal. Each scroll was just under four inches wide and was 80 inches long. To improve on the last time this was done, the scrolling mechanism was connected to the car’s odometer.
The Iter-Auto’s scrolls were simplistic. They didn’t have much detail. Instead, drivers largely got a white page with an orange or yellow road in the middle. This road map would move based on the scrolling of your car’s odometer. Features on the map included distance markers, locations of gas stations, points of interest, locations of bridges, locations of railroad crossings, elevation changes, curves, and cross streets.
Of course, none of these navigators got you to specific destinations. They were more for helping you get from one town or city to another. If you had no idea how to get to the starting point, you had to break out your paper map or ask for directions. It was the same deal once you got to the destination city. The navigators only got you to the city. You were on your own after that.
Of course, these systems had other limitations, too. If the scrolls got stuck, they stopped being accurate. If the road changed for any reason, the map would be inaccurate. The scrolls and boxes also couldn’t help you if you took a wrong turn or had to detour around a crash or construction. All of these systems assumed that you’d be able to complete them.
It would take another 60 years before satellite-based navigation would reach the dashboards of production cars. In the decades between the Iter-Auto and the 1990 Eunos Cosmo, there had been developments of increasing complexity. For example, on October 15, 1971, BBC’s Tomorrow’s World reported about a cassette tape-based voice turn-by-turn navigation system.
You just have to watch this, because it’s great:
This system worked a lot like the Iter-Auto in that it matched the movement of the vehicle to navigation, but it had some computerization and had pre-recorded phrases rather than a physical map for you to look at.
General Motors would come out with a complicated system in 1966, called Driver Aid, Information and Routing (D.A.I.R.), which used punch cards, lights on the dashboard, and magnets in the road surface to determine your location. The system was also like a rudimentary OnStar in that it could be used to dispatch help in case you run out of gas, crash, have a flat tire, or just need help. Here’s how General Motors described it:
For the route minder, the driver uses a special card punched for his destination. The card fits a slot in the console. The routing equipment is activated by signals from magnets buried in the road at each major intersection, and compares the signals with the punched instructions on the card. Panel lights will tell the driver whether to turn left, turn right, or go straight through. With all major intersections coded, it would be possible to travel across the U.S. by the system’s direction.
GM also explained the system’s features:
1. Coded emergency messages from car to automatic recorders in a service center, with voice acknowledgment from the center, and voice radio communication from car to service center and servicе сenter to car.
2. A roadside-to-vehicle communication system that transmits audio signs. These voice messages to the driver can include emergency traffic bulletins about the road ahead, as well as information on upcoming accommodations and service facilities.
3. A visual sign minder, triggered by roadway signals from magnets or lowfrequency transmitters which repeats highway sign information on a panel display inside the car.
4. A route minder that guides the driver to his destination without use of maps. Equipment includes a prograrmmed in-car route selector and route direction indicator activated by coded roadway signals.
Sadly, since this system required magnets to be embedded into highways and spaced three miles to five miles apart, implementing it would have been an incredible undertaking. Apparently, GM pushed for a nationwide effort to embed magnets into every highway in America. The system never went into production.
Honda would also take a swing at this in 1981 with the Electro Gyrocator. This used helium, a gyroscope, a CRT screen, and semi-transparent maps to effectively locate the vehicle. From IIEE Spectrum:
“Honda developed a number of devices to make the Electro Gyrocator work, including a gyroscope that had two wires in a stream of circulating helium. When the vehicle moved straight ahead, helium hit both wires equally, keeping them at the same temperature. When the vehicle turned, the flow of helium deviated to produce a temperature difference between the two wires. An onboard computer could detect that difference and translate it into directional information.”
Honda’s system, which was available only in Japan, added 20 pounds to the weight of the car.
Awesome Old Technology
Let’s go back to 1930s navigation. Sadly, while the Iter-Auto was relatively popular in its day, it’s believed that not many survived into the modern day. So, if you want to experience what it’s like to motor like you’re from the 1930s, you’ll have to use another scroll-based navigator tool.
Honestly, I think the Iter-Auto might be more impressive than GM’s and Honda’s craziness. The Touring Club Italiano seemingly stretched 1930s technology to its limits. Like I said, this happened decades before space programs, the launches of satellites, and even before the advent of computers that took up whole rooms. I just love this idea of tying navigation to an odometer.
This makes me appreciate the innovators that we have today even more. It’s trivial to drive almost anywhere in the world, and the computer in your pocket is amazing. I can only imagine how the people of the 1920s and 1930s felt when they learned their car could somewhat tell them how to drive to the next city.
Top graphic images: Nationaal Archief – Public Domain
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Props for the creativity to come up with these systems. One additional drawback to the odometer-based ones: I’d be an anxious mess the whole trip knowing that if I stopped for gas or food I’d be putting myself “off course.”
“Sadly, since this system required magnets to be embedded into highways “
MAGNETS? Good thing that wasn’t implemented or something like this might have happened:
https://media.tenor.com/By7nrydPLx8AAAAM/magnet.gif
/jk
I was an avid viewer of Tomorrow’s World as a kid – every week you saw something that made the future seem impossibly fantastic, and something else that made the future seem like hell on earth. Most of what you saw never made it into production, but some things became ubiquitous. For a geek in the 80s who wanted to be an inventor when he grew up it was great TV.
This is great! It would be neat to see an Autopian article on navigation over the centuries. For example, the Chinese had a differential-based dead-reckoning cart with a figure that always pointed south regardless of the cart orientation.
Of course, naval navigation has always used celestial navigation (sextants, star charts, etc), and that’s still heavily used across marine, aviation, and especially aerospace as a backup to GPS or when outside of the GPS network (like in space).
The inertial and radio-based navigation systems from the Cold War era would make an interesting article I think.
My parents used gas station maps, Dad would get me copies so I could follow along in the back seat. After I corrected my mother a few times, at about age 7, I graduated to navigator.
Best time I had was when I was 12. I told Dad, in Massachusetts, to “stay on 95 until we get to the tall wooden Indian in Freeport, then turn right.” Dad knew where the tall wooden Indian was, so he thanked me and drove. Mom complained all the way from Newburyport to the tall wooden Indian. She had driven by it hundreds of times, but had never seen it.
For those with a little local knowledge: the freeway through Freeport, Maine is now 295, but back then it was part of 95 and it wasn’t limited access from Yarmouth to Freeport.
Those “scroll the paper yourself” navigators are still used! I’ve only seen them in harescrambles and other dirt bike/ADV rides. They’re called roll/route sheets, as discussed here: https://www.dixiedualsport.com/rollchart.html
Came here to say this too!
A tradition going back to John Ogilby’s Britannia (1675), the first road atlas of this type! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britannia_(atlas)#Ogilby's_Britannia
Only 901 years until we get the Plus Four Wristlet Golf Scorer!
Fascinating that the GM system would have relied on a brand new, expensive and rudimentary magnet system rather than trying to develop radio based navigation like Loran-C. That also would’ve required a tremendous amount of infrastructure but at least it could’ve been more supportable.
Not like it matters, the whole thing was probably just a publicity stunt anyway.
Looks like the current scrolling rally notes that motorcyclists still use today.
And we thought driver distraction was a recent phenomenon.
“automated” it may have been, but it still required the driver pay attention to their environment beyond their surrounding lanes. Recent research on phone-based turn-by-turn directions indicates they are not good for our geographical knowledge/cognitive maps
Yup. Whenever someone asks me “Did you take 127 or cut through on Central?” (or whatever) my honest answer is inevitably “I have no idea.” Not proud to admit that.
I am so here for map content!
Back in 2002 I navigated the western USA using a road atlas the size of a pocket notebook. It’s a good job there weren’t too many places to make wrong turns off US 50.
Well that’s progress for ya – When I was a kid my Dad would navigate the continent using a Rand-McNally Road Atlas the size of a… well… an atlas!
(they were big)
MapQuest was a game changer in the early Internet days. I didn’t have a printer, so I would right down the directions on a piece of paper to take with me.
Pre-GPS my company had distance measuring devices that hooked into the car’s odometer but could be calibrated to be reasonably accurate over a mile or two. Technicians would then locate features along a road by the number of feet along the road as driven from the county line.
I supervised an older technician who would go back and redo the surveys several times, noting that the distance varied a foot or two when he checked them. I tried to explain that it was well within the accuracy of the system. I pointed out that he pulled off the road to write things down, thus adding a foot or two. But the tech kept sneaking out and re-doing the work, often three or four times. I finally had to order him to stop and he transferred out with many choice words for ‘that new engineer’.
I’m convinced this is the system my local delivery companies use to bring me my packages.
I’ve found that if I take the directions and draw my own version of the map on a scrap of paper with landmarks and such the act of copying it down makes me remember it.
The bulk of Gen Xers and Elder Millennials around here probably remember two things:
The kids’ toy with the car on the screen and the little steering wheel so you could try to keep the car on the “road” (which was a scroll of the same 12″ of scenery rolling infinitely on a screen)
The other thing that came to mind was the old AAA travel maps called “TripTiks” where you would tell them where you’re going and they’d provide a series of vertically-oriented maps between two major cities. That way you got the detail you needed, along with POIs, and it was a lot easier to manage than a full road atlas or large folding map.
Both of these things were alive and well into the mid-90s or even later.
I do remember that game.
As a weird kid, I LOVED getting the TripTiks when my grandparents and I would go places over the summer and tracking our trip myself. Can confirm nit long before Covid AAA still had a version that you could get from a vending machine in the lobby.
As for the game, there were multiples of the style but I had a Tomy “Digital Derby” that I loved. It had two independent reels that moved at slightly different speeds to at least add some semblance of randomness
I married into a AAA membership, and had never seen a TripTik before, but I remember those being really cool!
I also recall printing out Mapquest directions and following them to a friend’s house in another state.
Oh, I totally remember getting dragged along to the AAA office so mom could pick up a TripTik. And not being allowed to wait in the car because she didn’t know how long it would take
Also, some early base versions of the Ford/Microsoft Sync system were sort of similar, directions for your full route would be downloaded to the car, if you missed a turn or otherwise deviated, directions were paused until you found your way back onto the original route. Unless you stopped and downloaded a new set of directions from your new starting location. There was no recalculating on the fly and also no screen, just audio
I remember both of these things! My parents used to get TripTiks for all of our road trip vacations. Although ours were supplied by CAA, cause Canada.
I should see if my dad has them tucked away somewhere, they’d make a great dashboard prop for my next 80s/90s Retro car meet.
We never used the TripTiks–we’d stop at a welcome center in any state we hadn’t been through within the last couple years and pick up a map, plus we had the road atlas from whatever year we’d last purchased one.
When you could start getting directions online to print out, that was a gamechanger for me.
But I definitely remember the toy. And I’ve played a very old arcade game version of it, too. Definitely more difficult than it feels like it should be (though that could be at least partially attributed to the degradation of the cabinet–that steering wheel was loose).
I also recall printing turn-by-turn Mapquest directions for trips I was planning.
I did that for years for work until I got my first GPS. Nothing like flying to some random place and having to find your way to some even more random place out in the Midwest by paper map.
And as a dude from New England, the midwestern tendency to give directions by compass direction was baffling to me initially. N, S, E, W, is rather meaningless when you have grown up in a place where the roads resemble a plate of spaghetti dropped on the floor, not a grid.
I got a TripTik for my first big solo road trip. Maine to DC for a fraternity convention summer after my sophomore year in college. Middle of summer, hot as blazes, no A/C in my ’85 Jetta 2dr. I turned 21 on that trip. Still have the souvenir glass from my very first purchased drink, a Hard Rock Hurricane. Memories!
I had the other driving toy as a kid, the one with a 3D circular map where you drove the car around, and the car was magnetically attached to a wand under the map. So you could swap out the cars.
Amusingly, though I am only 56 years old, my AAA card says I have been a member for 60-odd years – I got added to the family plan started by my grandfather when I was in college, LOL. Mom maintains that and I get it for Christmas every year.
Yes!!! Scrolled down looking for this…TripTik were part of my childhood (late 80’s to early 90’s)…on roadtrips, the privilege of sitting shotgun came with the responsibility of navigating using the Triptik. But it was really easy and kinda fun.
As a kid of older parents, I remember using gas station maps that were upwards of 20 years out of date, those years being between when they were putting the Interstate as initially planned on the map and when what was actually built was long since done.