Who Needs GPS? The Forgotten Story of Etak's Amazing 1985 Car Navigation System - Fast Company
Thirty years ago, a company called Etak released the first commercially available computerized navigation system for automobiles. Spearheaded by an engineer named Stan Honey and bankrolled by Nolan Bushnell, the cofounder of Atari, the company's Navigator was so far ahead of its time that the phrase "ahead of its time" seems like an understatement. To appreciate just how amazing the concept of car navigation was in 1985, you need to recall that the Global Positioning System—the constellation of satellites operated by the U. S. government—didn't come fully online until a decade later, in... In 2000, that restriction was lifted, allowing a new era of consumer GPS navigational gadgets to flourish. Etak beat modern GPS systems to market by a decade and a half. Everything about Etak's Navigator had to be conceived from scratch. To build it, Etak had to devise technologies and collect data that are still in use today by some of the most familiar navigation apps and devices on the planet. Bushnell had hired Honey to navigate his racing yacht Charley through the 1983 Transpacific Yacht Race, a prestigious sailing event that spanned 2,225 nautical miles of open ocean from Los Angeles to Honolulu. Source: www.fastcompany.com
