How Etak Built a Car Navigation System In 1985

Posted by timothy on Friday June 26, 2015 @02:52AM from the this-way-to-the-time-machine dept.

harrymcc writes: Thirty years ago, a startup called Etak released the Navigator, an in-car navigation system. It provided turn-by-turn driving directions despite the fact that GPS did not exist, and stored its maps--which Etak had to create itself--on cassette tapes. And some of its data and technologies are still in use in today's navigation apps. Over at Fast Company, Benj Edwards tells this amazing story. I remember reading about (and lusting over) this system back then, in the much-missed DAK catalog.

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14 Ingenious Fasteners you didn't know you needed by JaredOfEuropa · 2015-06-26 02:58 · Score: 4, Funny

Looking at the cover of that Popular Science magazine, I see that they too were far ahead of their time, inventing clickbait before there even was such a thing as a "click" (on the web, at least).

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If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...