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Pre-GPS Route Finder (1927)

Nowadays, we use our smartphone or smartwatch with their GPS-powered map and navigation apps to know where we are and where we are headin...


Nowadays, we use our smartphone or smartwatch with their GPS-powered map and navigation apps to know where we are and where we are heading. But in 1927, we don't have communications satellites off the Earth yet so an ingenious invention was made - the Plus Fours Routefinder.


It was basically a wrist contraption that has a selection of mini scrolls that contained different route maps at a particular part of the city. It was basically a manual navigator that you have to scroll up and down.

A decade later, the Iter Avto became the world's first automobile navigator. Basically, it works similarly to Plus Fours Routefinder but installed on the car like today's touchscreen navigation systems. Depending on the speed of the car, the screen manually scrolls the paper maps that are attached to a cable similar to a mechanical speedometer. However, the motorist should change the map and find it on his current location when he makes a turn to a different direction.


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