Honda's 1981 Electro Gyrocator: vintage navigation at its finest
If you've balked at the prices automakers are charging for integrated navigation systems, you should really take a look at what ¥300,000 ($2,746) would buy you in 1981. That atrocity you see above was an actual option in Honda's Accord during Ronald Reagan's presidency, and while it didn't sync up with any satellites, it did help to guide you along in some form or another. The Electro Gyrocator, as it was so eloquently named, accepted transparencies of maps and utilized a gas gyroscope that allowed the map to move with the motion of the car and plot your progress. Once a certain map ran out of road, you just popped the next one in and kept on cruisin'. And here we are kvetching about whether our portable navigator has 10 or 11 million POIs...
[Via Autoblog]
