[HN Gopher] Analog GPS: Scrolling Wrist and Car-Mounted Maps of ...
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Analog GPS: Scrolling Wrist and Car-Mounted Maps of the 20s and 30s
(2016)
Author : zeristor
Score : 75 points
Date : 2024-07-13 08:37 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (99percentinvisible.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (99percentinvisible.org)
| chockablock wrote:
| [2016]
| zeristor wrote:
| Adding the date would have taken the title over the 80
| character limit.
|
| I take it the title for each post needs to be stored on a
| single punch card; as I understand it the origins of the 80
| character limit.
| userbinator wrote:
| Reminds me of the ancient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South-
| pointing_chariot ...and the somewhat newer
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro_Gyrocator
| r-k wrote:
| Still in use today for desert racing
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDiXs-3-aZs
| whartung wrote:
| Sort of related, friends and I were talking today and the subject
| of AAA (American Automobile Association) came up.
|
| I recalled I had joined back in 1990, in preparation for my
| spontaneous trip to Canada. I had just left my job and had two
| weeks before my new one. Some how I got it in my head to drive
| from So Cal up the coast to Canada, across to Calgary, bounce off
| of Yellowstone and home via Utah.
|
| I joined AAA and got not just a bunch of maps and guides that
| they're famous for, but I also got a "TripTic".
|
| The TripTic was this custom route plan in a spiral bound book.
| The book is, roughly, 7-8 inches long and 3ish inches wide. And
| the way it works was you opened it up, starting on the first
| page, and followed it by going "up". The driving direction was
| always up, but not necessarily north. Up was forward. Each page
| was a chunk of interstate highway and the surrounding area mapped
| out.
|
| If you took a larger map and placed rectangles end to end along
| your route, and orienting each map section appropriately, then
| bound them all in a flip book, that was a TripTic.
|
| My book was probably 20 pages long. My route was 4500 miles. I
| imagine they made mini maps for all of the major highways and
| interstates, going in both directions, for the US and Canada.
| Honestly you could probably do it with as few as 100 map
| segments, if that many. They had a lot of cubbies in the cabinet,
| not sure if there were 100 of them.
|
| I only used it once, but it was a great to navigation for my
| trip, and thought it was a really clever system.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| When I was growing up in the 90s, Triptics were a staple of
| every family summer vacation. My parents used CAA (Canadian
| version of the AAA) and before every trip they would also get
| large format maps with the entire route methodically
| highlighted, even with warnings for construction or slow
| points.
|
| The fun though was still following the directions. Nowadays the
| GPS tells you exactly which exits to take or which lanes to
| stay in. It wasn't a family vacation without crazy stress as a
| bunch of offramps or potential exits approached, or the
| eventual looping back for a missed exit. GPS makes it all
| easier. But it also feels like going on autopilot without a
| hint of adventure in the way that roadtrips used to feel.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| It must have been the late 80s when my parents briefly had a
| AAA membership, and I remember going with my dad to pick up a
| Triptic for a vacation.
|
| I'd never imagined something like that, so I thought it was a
| very excellent thing at the time as the clerk skillfully
| explained how to use it. My dad was more reluctant to deal
| with this kind of help.
|
| We only ever used it once, since my dad felt that he was
| sufficiently expert at reading maps that he didn't need
| Triptics.
|
| Unfortunately, he expected everyone else around him to be as
| expert with maps as he was, and he was the one who was doing
| the driving.
|
| Usually, this combined to mean that family vacations were
| syncopated with the car being angrily slung onto the shoulder
| of the freeway in the space between an exit ramp and the
| driving lanes, where _words_ were exchanged between the
| driver and the navigator.
|
| And if handled right, good GPS nav almost completely resolves
| that situation.
|
| But you're right: It does lead to bland road trips. I find
| the routes to be pretty unmemorable and fatiguing at times.
| This is a bummer because travelling can take up so much time
| in a vacation -- it'd be nice if there were something more
| memorable than an endless ribbon of uninterrupted pavement.
|
| (And one solution for that is the "Avoid Highways" function
| in the navigation software. When the boredom and fatigue
| begin to set in, use this button to just get the hell off of
| the freeway and see what the area is about.
|
| It takes time, but I think it is worth making time to do this
| occasionally.)
| dublin wrote:
| One reason I'm not eager to ever have an EV - you can't
| really do the "avoid highways" thing on a non-trivial EV
| roadtrip, so you're doomed to Interstates...
| ssl-3 wrote:
| I mean... One still can.
|
| It just has different costs and risks.
|
| Just to posit some numbers: If there's 80 miles of range
| left, and it is 20 miles to the next charger, but mashing
| the "avoid highways" button makes that next charger 40
| miles away instead: I think I wouldn't hesitate to get
| off of the highway if I felt it would be useful or fun
| right now.
|
| I'll hypothetically arrive at a charger with ~40 miles of
| range remaining instead of ~60. Ain't so bad. I do
| similar risk assessments when driving long distances on
| gasoline and detouring from my planned route to mix
| things up.
|
| Now, of course: There's a decent chance that the charger
| is broken or slow and being SOL, whereas gas is much more
| available. That's potentially pretty ugly, and it's ugly
| in ways that running low/out of gas isn't:
|
| It's easy to score some gas in semi-rural anywhere-USA by
| knocking on a few doors, being polite, and having a bit
| of cash. (Some people are complete dicks, but I insist
| that most people are generally good and I am willing to
| die on this hill.)
|
| Or: I have cheap roadside assistance. They'll bring me a
| small amount of gas anywhere...eventually...as a part of
| the service that I pay for by the month.
|
| It's probably also easy enough to ask nicely to use an
| extension cord to juice up an EV, but that's a _ton_
| slower than dumping in a couple of gallons of gasoline
| is.
|
| And due to limited range, it's more likely to happen with
| an EV than ICE.
|
| But meh. It's still useful to go on a mini-adventure
| sometimes. One just needs to take everything into
| consideration.
|
| And it'll get easier for EV drivers to do this as time
| moves on.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Triptiks were great, here's a short video showing what they
| looked like:
|
| https://www.tiktok.com/@taramstewart/video/73101933919360156...
| whartung wrote:
| Pretty sure they used the same orange hilighter when they did
| mine!
| euroderf wrote:
| It was a great membership bennie.
|
| And kind of like software, in that there was a big investment
| up front (by AAA) to develop the system and all the pages, but
| then they could crank out specific itineraries cheaply and on
| demand.
| dividuum wrote:
| There's a 90' style website for longer bike trips between
| (mostly) German cities: https://radweit.de/. Each trip is often
| one A4 page and cuts up the complete track into individual map
| segments neatly arranged so it fills a single page. We used
| that once a while ago and it worked great.
| fifilura wrote:
| Very nice summertime rabbit-hole!
|
| All of the designs seem very obvious given the technology of the
| time, and at the same time obviously dysfunctional.
|
| Innovation at its best!
| old34 wrote:
| Related...
| https://web.archive.org/web/20100825032924/http://www.asciim...
| ziofill wrote:
| Reminds be a bit of this 1971 tech:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qqnHtH1RAs
| adav wrote:
| I'd love to make my own scrolling maps.
|
| Can anyone think of a good algorithm for "unrolling" or nearly
| "straightening" a wiggly route line so that it could fit in one
| long narrow straight strip?
|
| It still needs to retain illustrative turns and kinks to help
| with wayfinding.
| omoikane wrote:
| Related, an analog car naviation system by Honda from the 80s:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38135979 - The Car
| Navigation System / 1981
|
| https://global.honda/en/heritage/episodes/1981navigationsyst...
| wdfx wrote:
| Love that the photo of the wrist mounted one shows an immediate
| usability issue; the scroll knobs are on the wrong side?
| gpderetta wrote:
| are they? Or is it being worn upside-down or on the wrong arm
| in the picture?
| wdfx wrote:
| I don't think it's upside down, but looks like on the "wrong"
| arm, though that's debatable depending on handedness. The
| more I think about this though, this seems like only one of
| several fundamental issues with this thing :P
| dublin wrote:
| This rolled map and notes system is still used today in many
| rally events, especially on motorcycles in events like the Dakar
| Rally. (Many cars and trucks use digital screens instead, but the
| paper has real advantages for the moto guys...
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