In-Car Sat Nav? Without a Satellite? In 1971? | Tomorrow's World | Retro Tech | BBC Archive

Michael Rodd demonstrates an extraordinary new invention that could transform the way drivers negotiate the roads forever. A nifty control unit reads information from the car's milometer and relays instructions to the driver using pre-recorded phrases stored on a cassette tape. With such clear, precise navigation, might this spell the end for unwieldy paper maps and stopping to ask unreliable pedestrians?
This clip is taken from Tomorrow's World, originally broadcast on BBC One, Friday 15 October, 1971.
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[@commandert5]

This has to be one of the first ever "gps told me to turn into a river" jokes. I wonder how someone seeing that for the first time must have felt

[@alsmith20000]

To be honest, people probably drove into rivers, back when there were just maps.

[@Dan23_7]

No lies mate at our work place they had an agency driver a couple years ago, he can opened his van with a 9ft bridge…. Our vans are merc Luton’s which are 10’5” He blamed the sat nav 😂😂

[@colors6692]

It's not GPS!🤦🏿‍♀️

[@Dan23_7]

@@colors6692 it’s TPS 😂

[@commandert5]

@@colors6692 That's...not...the point...🤦‍♂️

[@grinsko6741]

He was recently spotted still driving aimlessly around Chatham, having encountered several more roadworks.

[@jameslatimer1432]

And many old people with the symptoms of Alzheimer's

[@steviewondek]

Everyone has/ or makes their own version of hell. 😂

[@landoftheloops3]

hahaha

[@clareswinney1087]

😂🤦‍♀️😂

[@tomnunns6006]

😂😂

[@Georgije2]

When I was a kid I thought those little arrows blinking next to the steering wheel before the driver took a turn were a navigation system telling them where to go.

[@googleuser2609]

when i was a kid, i used to think that when i looked up to the sky and clouds were moving.....that I was actually witnessing Earth's rotation.

[@PrinceAndrewFucksKids]

Bmw's don't have them lol

[@Cooke125]

@@googleuser2609the clouds are moving tho

[@fluchterschoen]

You could be joking but I'm sure you're serious - kids think like this and it's adorable. Around 1975/1976, when I was aged four or five, my dad bought his first ever brand new car. His previous car, a 1960s Morris Oxford, broke its rear axle and went to autoheaven. Our new car was a Skoda, P plate, and it had front seat belts, with the same type of red release button you see today. My brothers and I had never seen these before and excitedly asked my dad what the red buttons were for. He kidded on he wasn't sure, and speculated that maybe they were "self destruct buttons". To me as a five year old this made perfect, but terrifying, sense! Cartoons and films often had the "big red button" or "this message will self destruct" thing going on...I remember being scared that my dad might inadvertently press one of these self-destruct buttons, and made him promise me that he'd be careful when he was in the car on his own (without me and my brothers to keep vigil and issue reminders of the ever-present-danger).

[@megacontroller2657]

The camera quality is absolutely phenomenal for 1971

[@JJsAutomotive]

...not that the footage is digitally restored and maybe enhanced. 🤷‍♂

[@Briggie]

It was probably filmed on film reel and has been rescanned in modern resolutions since then.

[@noahtorocalzado]

VHS and Betamax came out in 1970 and 1976 respectively, and before the eighties in Europe they were not paid much attention, not even by television companies. Surely this video has been digitized directly from a professional videotape, with much higher quality than domestic tapes, which in PAL format (european colour encoding system) records at 625 lines, usable 576 lines at 25fps (in USA uses NTSC, 480 lines at 29,97fps) and there are professional tapes that reach 4K, such as movies, that's why many times they release very old movie remasters at a very good quality.

[@AutPen38]

@@noahtorocalzado As it was filmed in the early '70s, it's highly unlikely that it was recorded on VHS or Beta. Those cheap formats were used on TW and other shows later ("Run VT" was a common saying on live shows once videotapes were widely available) but this was almost certainly filmed on high-resolution celluloid film stock (at least 35mm) much like a film/movie. The BBC archive contains thousands of dusty old reels of film that have been digitized for modern usage. (Much of the stuff recorded directly to VHS or similar got taped over, because it was a "throwaway" format. Real celluloid film gradually degrades - and is also a fire hazard - but it can last a long time in those old tins.)

[@michaelturner4457]

They used 16mm film. Which the BBC often used for outside locations.

[@xboxmods]

0:59 “Yet here I am, completely alone in the car” The Cameraman: 👁👄👁

[@gdogg3710]

I love anything like this, where someone has clearly had the right idea, but they’ve had it at a time before the necessary technology exists to make it a viable commercial product…

[@nfullenwider]

There is a tragic irony to knowing they were right, just not right then.

[@Pandaxtor]

Same thing happened with machine learning. That scientist was mocked for suggesting that machine learning is practical.

[@godfrey_of_america]

I bet some American was the one to make billions on the idea.

[@gdogg3710]

@@godfrey_of_america well satnav is based on GPS, which is an ex US military system, so I would say so…

[@xureality]

@@godfrey_of_america that honour goes to Gary Burrell and Min Kao, owners of Garmin.

[@hereticpariah6_66]

I love how he referred to a _"cassette of tape"_ early on in the recording!

[@matthewclark2123]

There was a company in the United States that did this kind of thing in the 30s but without words on tape it was a guided map on a roll connected to the odometer

[@diond1333]

Next episode: The 1976 version of Google Streetview using only 8,673 Polaroids to plot a 1 mile route.

[@Anmeteor9663]

Now that's a great idea for invention! Mind if I give it a go?

[@TPK_MAKG]

@@Anmeteor9663 sure mate go on

[@brettknoss486]

Prior to Opperation Overlord, English families were encouraged to provide the government Holliday photos taken on French beaches, so that they could be combined into one image for strategic descisions.

[@straightpipediesel]

The US military did that. 1978 with Laserdiscs: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspen_Movie_Map

[@grinsko6741]

Classic! Lol

[@HazelTheHare]

This is actually slightly better than I thought it would be. The monitoring box is pretty clever.

[@jaymac7203]

But completely useless if you're not travelling from the place on the tape 😭😭😭 lol 😂

[@crazychameleon123]

@@jaymac7203 But it is said that it is for the likes of driving between the airport and hotels or training on bus routes. Admittedly very limited though.

[@foxxster3565]

@@jaymac7203 or if you take a wrong turn .

[@freethis222]

There must be some interesting operations on that PCB!

[@straightpipediesel]

@@freethis222 It's pretty simple. It's basically 3 counters. It's a tone detector hooked up to a counter, which advances at a fast rate. A second counter adds odometer pulses and when it hits the scaling factor, it advances the distance counter (i.e. a scaler). When the distance and the tone counter equal, it plays the tape and resets.

[@lawrenceweston922]

Ah, I remember life before GPS …. Having the little compass attached to the dash, having a map-book in the glove compartment, plotting out your route the day before and writing it down. Can’t say I miss those days.

[@sorenpx]

I used to be a pizza delivery driver and relied on my map book entirely. I definitely DO miss those days. There's just something about doing things manually that feels better.

[@halfbakedproductions7887]

I remember the good old days of printing out directions from the internet. Do a return trip from AB and the return leg to A was different to the outbound leg to B. Never understood that. One disastrous journey I had in 2011 under that system was when I missed a junction I needed and went straight on instead - added 90 minutes to my journey by the time I sorted it all out. I eventually learned that missed junction was at a point just 15 minutes from my destination. The trouble with paper maps and directions is that they are f--k all use if you don't know where you are to begin with.

[@sorenpx]

@@halfbakedproductions7887 It may surprise you to learn that I still print directions out from the Internet. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer printing them, reading through them to get an idea of where all I'm going, and then following my printed sheet rather than using a GPS. Trying to follow a GPS in real-time feels confusing and chaotic to me. I only turn the GPS on in a situation like what you mentioned, where I've somehow gotten lost and just don't know where I am.

[@baraitalo]

We used to send off to the aa and they'd send an amazing concertina'd typed directions

[@nonegone7170]

@@sorenpx Just preview the route you'll take in virtual reality with Google Earth, you'll know exactly what everything looks like beforehand.

[@Truth1561]

I used to love tomorrow’s world as a teenager back in the 70s. Our school was taken to see a ‘computer’ in 1974 that was literally the size of a large living room. I never dreamt I would ever myself own such technology- and be able to operate it 🤣

[@WaynesWorld999]

... and carry it in your pocket.

[@brunobastos5533]

@@WaynesWorld999 on your wrist

[@johnwt7333]

And you still don't

[@JayTraversJT]

Him: "yet here I am, completely alone in the car!" Cameraman: :(

[@superposition2644]

The people who hold the cameras are always treated like they don't exist.

[@yseson_]

The cameraman is fine as he’s immortal so long as he’s holding the camera

[@paulcooper3410]

The cameraman is invisible

[@theupside7549]

Camera man needs smokes, 1 lap through shopping centre later and the whole days turn left/right next goes out the window 😂

[@dylan3657]

😄

[@DavidFraser007]

You'd need a 44foot shipping container full of cassettes to travel across Europe.

[@monkmodemalik8225]

The vw can haul it.

[@Mortthemoose]

😅😅👏👏

[@krashd]

The cassette only has phrases recorded on it so the same cassette can be used anywhere in the world. The directions come from the unit below the dashboard.

[@rosstee]

@@krashd Not really, the device never actually knows where you are and even if it did, the cassette isn't random access so it couldn't play the correct directions at will (a CD would be slightly better, but still clunky).

[@lePoMo]

for a single trip across europe (one destination), you wouldn't need many more. It's the number of directions that count (not the distance), and directions get few and far between once you're on autoroutes/highways.

[@Noone-of-your-Business]

3:13 - Back in the days when "self drive" cars still required a *human* driver. You had me stumped there for a second.

[@SLGY]

I was about to comment the same then found someone else had the same moment lol. "self driving? with that piece of sh...... ohhh! self-drive, as in you don't have someone of a lower class do it for you, lol"

[@LePedant]

EVERY gas station had maps, back then. Reading a map is a lot easier than having to record a new tape with every trip.

[@mattmclellan123]

“There is one drawback, however”… lovely understatement

[@CoPoint]

But you have to admit, the end is downright clairvoyant - some drivers have the same problem today 😁...

[@fabolvaskarika7940]

Probably there was not so much alterations of the roads, as wasn’t so extended the road networks also the number of the cars made it possible to turn around easily. But the level of technology of that time is incredible if you see in hindsight. Obviously it’s would not have a market this days, but it’s interesting how they developed and perfected during the time. It’s like this days AI robots, what already in use and look humanoid though most of the population not aware of their existence. If we looking back 50 years from now then it’s will be at least so amazing, and maybe we wish turn back time. Maybe one day that’s will be possible too, if already someone, somewhere didn’t do. 😆

[@pascalcoole2725]

Well this scenaro still happens today

[@Praise___YaH]

HERE is Our Savior YaH The Heavenly FATHER HIMSELF was Who they Crucified for our sins, NOT jesus, and “HERE IS THE PROOF” From the Ancient Semitic Scroll: "Yad He Vav He" is what Moses wrote, when Moses asked YaH His Name (Exodus 3) Ancient Semitic Direct Translation Yad - "Behold The Hand" He - "Behold the Breath" Vav - "Behold The NAIL"

[@DJ-jv2gk]

My dad used one off these when I was 6 years old . He's still not home 😕

[@livelongandprosper70]

😁

[@Flying_Acehole]

🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@goldilocks913]

😂

[@mohammedashraf6978]

😂😂😂

[@sjmachrihanish]

I just saw him on the Marlow bypass.

[@timsummers870]

I had no idea something that resembled a vehicular GPS already existed in the early 1970s. This is truly amazing.

[@Callummullans]

Absolutely amazing feat of technology it’s quite easy to consider modern tech just arriving as is, it’s awesome to see how we got to where we are.

[@Kivamusicchannel]

What a handsome man!

[@explorer806]

A vast improvement on the gramophone version.

[@steviewondek]

😂But only for the audiophiles that one, those who really love a magical mystery tour without the Lucy.

[@jdm65]

Real enthusiasts swear by their 78s, though most went over to 33s

[@chaosnexxus9255]

@@jdm65 Young whippersnapper! REAL enthusiasts still use wax cylinder navigation.

[@MyTubeSVp]

LMAO

[@glennmorris371]

That one was wind up of course.

[@jamesbyrne9312]

What's amazing is that this really was an authentic glimpse of the future. Forgot the tech, just the experience of voice command driving. Like time travel.

[@richardlee9825]

yup, just imAgine how far technology have gone since then.

[@jamesbyrne9312]

@@richardlee9825 yeah it's astounding

[@BlackheathTownhouse]

Voice command driving predates this device - it's called the wife

[@jamesbyrne9312]

@@BlackheathTownhouse best comment, turn around where possible hahaha

[@mersenne2486]

just like Assistants today. Which are not intelligent.

[@CanadianBakin42O]

It's honestly amazing how we went from that to Google maps on our phones

[@CarzyNavi]

4:33 BBC's sarcasm level at the time was infinite, quite impressive

[@GrilloTheFlightless]

“Cassette of tape”. Love it!

[@rosstee]

Literally!

[@neodonkey]

It's correct.

[@andybunn5780]

Tape used to come on big ass reels, you know?

[@doct0rnic]

Traveling in a Beetle of Volkswagen

[@GrilloTheFlightless]

@@andybunn5780 I know. I remember them. I just thought it was rather quaint to hear “cassette of tape” when it’s been such a long time since anyone regularly called them that, especially considering they were more commonly called a cassette tape. Or cassette. Or just tape.

[@CorpoPsycho]

What amazes me more is how smooth those roads are back then

[@st200ol]

It wasn't that long ago, cobbled streets had mostly stopped being built by the 1970's in Britain and we had tarmac by then too. :-)

[@rowanaldean]

@@st200ol I think he's pointing out how crap they are now - like they haven't been resurfaced since then 😂

[@breakingaustin]

Lot less cars using them by the 70's.. a fraction of the use now.

[@drunkenhobo8020]

@@breakingaustin They were a lot lighter too. Instead of that VW Beetle you'd have a Range Rover weighing more than three times as much. And probably still only carrying one person...

[@GreenTeaViewer]

So we're at the stage of marveling at how nice things were in the past...that shows a serious decline. Well we still have our handheld electronics I suppose

[@DevinDTV]

really puts into perspective how our technology now, less than 50 years later, is so incredible

[@fosterfuchs]

Not just this. If you went back to pre WWI, not much more than 100 years ago, how would you explain a smartphone to people then? The functions beyond making phone calls. The whole concept of apps would be impossible to explain. Even the technology behind making calls without a wire attached.

[@tormkg9879]

In the early eighties I knew a delivery driver [long distance every day, multiple cities along the I-5 in Oregon] who needed to let a substitute drive for a week. They recorded turn by turn directions on an audio cassette. Included with directions were time appropriate callouts for good places to stop for snacks or a nice spot to stop over lunch.

[@ianb9729]

"I was halfway to my destination when the player ate the tape"

[@gustavgnoettgen]

It's surprising to me that the instructions sound very much like those today. Maybe there's not much alternatives, but it definitely feels modern.

[@thefreedomguyuk]

The user interface is similar. Directions by voice. Nothing else is similar.

[@usernameonutube]

I mean people have had these ideas since the romantic era or longer were. It so different than people were even 10,000 years ago

[@galahad6300]

I wouldn’t be surprised if the instructions of the casette was part of the basis for how Satnavs give us directions today. This navigation system got pretty darn close to what we have today.

[@ianinkster2261]

That's because the communication needs haven't changed one bit. What's changes is the ability of machines to navigate.

[@700gsteak]

That just means that back then they had already perfected how instructions would sound best.

[@demontongue9893]

for the 1970's that's an incredible piece of kit for the 1907's even today if someone made something analogue like this out the blue they would be highly praised.

[@Concetta20]

That is so cool. I mean, we have this all in our phones now, but it was so clever how it sensed the car’s tire rotation for distance. We still have the signal ding.

[@KD400_]

This is 1971. The early days of sat nav. Someone had to develop it. Credit to those guys. They paved the way for everything we have today

[@97channel]

The impracticality of it, though. It's an understatement to say you'd need an absolute stack of those pre-recorded cassettes of tape for all the possible journeys you could take. And to have acquired a specific one in the first place, means that you had ample forward-planning time which could have been better spent simply looking at a map and scribbling down the directions.

[@faithlesshound5621]

In those days you could write to the AA or RAC and receive back a typed route for the journey you had planned. Nowadays it's done in seconds online. It just needed to be a little more precise and transferred from print to audiocassette and it would sound like a modern SatNav.

[@JesseP.Watson]

Was "cassettes of tape" which really jumped out at me on this film... Guessing it must be early after their introduction - perhaps why folks were going a bit wild looking for other things to use them for. It didn't actually suggest using them for general driving.

[@martinhughes2549]

@@JesseP.Watson Compact Cassette(s) where developed by Phillips and came out in 1963.

[@JesseP.Watson]

@@martinhughes2549 I stand corrected. ...When did car cassette of tape players become widely available?

[@martinhughes2549]

@@JesseP.Watson The first car player was available from 1968, however I don't remember them being all that common until the 1980s. In the US 8 track cartridges where quite popular in cars. Before Dolby B and chrome tape; the audio quality of Compact cassettes was quite poor. ( edit: cassette players and radios whern't always standard,you had a place to install a radio if you wanted in your car)

[@otakububba8081]

I heard of someone giving directions using an Lynyrd Skynyrd cassette once, using the timing of the songs for when to turn. My favorite part was ‘Now if you get to ‘Free Bird’ you’ve gone too far.’

[@hasoonnine]

I think I'm too young to get this joke

[@violenceisfun991]

@@hasoonnine its basically like telling someone "listen to this tape while you're driving, when it gets to track 6 or 7 take that turning, if it reaches track 8 you've missed the turning"

[@craigjensen6853]

HAD to be Indiana.

[@jamesgizasson]

Someone once said that if you drive the 40 through New Mexico, and start playing Weird Al's 'Albuquerque' as soon as you cross the city limit, by the time the song is finished, you're through the other side. X3

[@boldandbrashcrafts727]

@@jamesgizasson that's hilarious, and such a funny song too

[@rayhall6931]

Love the snapped off indicator stalk.....

[@silverback3633]

I am seeing all the cars from the 50s and 60s that I grew up with and the video clarity is very good.

[@OlafProt]

Loving this even just for the archive footage of 70s England!

[@funkblack]

mostly unchanged

[@BigSplenda1885]

@@funkblack LOL what?? Sarcasm?

[@uss_liberty_incident]

They were far better times.

[@jeff4362]

@@uss_liberty_incident Constant strikes, power cuts, gloomy economy and widespread sexism, racism and homophobia? Were they really better times? Granted today are not the best of times, but I think we're currently far far better than the 70s.

[@itemushmush]

i was born in 1993 but i still understand your comment. love these bbc archive vids! my father was born in 1940 and went through these times, if only i could understand his memories of better times....

[@David-uq6yb]

Can’t wait for this to come on the market!

[@ian9642]

Hopefully they have a mobile version

[@kjubajla]

I pre-ordered mine in Halfords

[@ian9642]

@@kjubajla I can't wait, hopefully we don't get a scalper issue

[@MattChance]

@@ian9642 It’s inserted gingerly into an automobile with wheels, don’t get more mobile than that!

[@Pau_Pau9]

Well product designers have to get to work soon! Because I can't stand that bare metal look..

[@JohnMiller-hu2dn]

How smooth the ride is in the old VW Beetle, even in this film it's already ten year's old, looks good apart from a missing hub cap.

[@Pobsta-de7hb]

Oh god I miss these days so much, I mean yea I was young in the 70s but the cars and the people and how things were. Cool video , wow I had forgotten all about the programme tomorrows world as well

[@Ashfielder]

To be honest, despite its flaws, I’d still take this as long as it helped me get out of Chatham.

[@ytwos1]

No, no, it’s aim and purpose, as being displayed here, was to show you how to get to your destination within Chatham.

[@happydillpickle]

You'll never find your way out without the cassette of tape!

[@russellthomson5571]

I love seeing all the old cars.

[@livelongandprosper70]

Watch Minder and the sweeney

[@lucius4556]

@@livelongandprosper70 I used to have a Granada like Reagan,2.3l,thought I was the bees knees lol

[@nolimittolearning4414]

BBC. Bring back tomorrow’s world. One of my favourite shows in the 80’s

[@OlawaleAkinwale]

How did I never hear of this? Very ingenious for the day and it just makes sense!

[@Mastakilla91]

I love it all. The cars, the colors, the clothes, the shops etc. Everything makes visually sense and gives off a cohesive look.

[@thefreedomguyuk]

You weren't there. If you'd been stuck there, you wouldn't love it. They were hard times. People didn't live very long. There weren't many luxuries. And paedos were socially accepted. It was easier among consenting adults to get laid, though. And people were brutally honest, no 2020 wokery back then.

[@andonasdavid9653]

@@thefreedomguyuk are the good points he pointed out wrong though? No.

[@johnpoo1662]

ikr... almost like it was filmed in the 1970s

[@gameking8809]

What are you talking about life expectancy in the 70s was nearly as high as today. And people were actually more wealthy than today

[@francisdec1615]

I was born in January 1971. I was pretty happy as a child.

[@clairewilliams9416]

I never thought we had anything like sat nav in the 70’s. That system was totally impractical but kind of genius at the same time and got us to where we are today.

[@craigjensen6853]

It still seemed so sci-fi even in the early 90s. And then when they started to get popular and were huge and cost a ton, who thought they would be in everybody's pocket and you could buy the chips for pennies?

[@hugocorminboeuf8007]

IIRC during WW2, They had a system which used a map, a compass and the speedometer to track their movments around the desert. and it kind of worked.

[@Mike-tv9rk]

Any kid from the 80’s whos ever tried to program a big trax could tell you this will never fly !😎

[@TrimeshSZ]

There was actually a fully operational satellite navigation system in 1964, although the only people that had access to it were the US Navy. It also had a very low fix rate (about once an hour, or even once every 2 hours at the equator), so it would have been pretty useless for car navigation - it worked pretty well for it's designed role of resetting the inertial navigation system on ships, though.

[@hexkwondo]

Everything has to start somewhere.

[@mediacityavid]

I liked Michael Rodd. He presented Screen Test in the 1970's on BBC1. He had his own production company called BlackRodd Productions specializing in medical training videos. I edited one of his programmes in the 1990's, all about heart attacks.

[@jerryfacts9749]

This system is genius. The start and end points must be perfect with no diversion from the route. It is restricted, if the driver goes off route it will be lost because the reference is internal only, and not external as like from GPS or radio navigation systems. Even though very limited, the system can work if used exactly right.

[@jdm65]

A face and voice of my youth. Lovely to see Michael Rodd again.

[@glennmorris371]

Screen Test.

[@Ass_Burgers_Syndrome]

@@glennmorris371 Damn yeah I remember that !!

[@dobbsmill3676]

Old lady walked up to me. "Am I going the right way?" I said "yes, I think so" She kept on walking and seemed happy.

[@Goatcha_M]

Got to love the bit at the end where he drives into the water, which so many people have done blindly following GPS systems.

[@codaboi138]

I love that some people actually figured out how to do this. The impracticallity of it aside, the fact that they figured out a way to do it before satellite is impressive. The fact that it wasn't practical makes it all the more interesting that designers came up with the idea in the first place.

[@cigmorfil4101]

Not completely. The first sat nav I used used dead reckoning with satellite correction - it worked wonderfully through tunnels, etc. This tape one is dead reckoning, but without the satellite correction - it just hopes that you've gone the specified distance in the correct direction.

[@XBKLYN]

@@cigmorfil4101 true dead reckoning requires odometer pulses and magnetometers.....I worked on such systems in the early 90s and they were a pain to deal with.

[@cigmorfil4101]

@@XBKLYN The one I used had a gyro in iit which occasionally went wrong: I'd be driving along a motorway and the system would show me curving off the road for about 5 seconds (running under dead reckoning) and then jump back onto it as the satellite correction was made, to be followed by curving off the road again and jumping back on again, repeatedly until the gyro was reset/reset itself. That system used a pulse from the vehicle's tacho and used the satellite correction to calibrate itself as well.

[@XBKLYN]

@@cigmorfil4101 sounds like we had very similar experiences. Gyros are hard core! As I recall we had to mount the two mag assemblies high above the vehicle on stalks to minimize effects from all the metal....it made us stand out in traffic which was very undesirable to say the least.....we also had a full size 486 PC in the trunk which stored the maps. I won't even get into the calibration routine 😁

[@rocksoliddude1]

Only problem was he later put tape in and discovered a family member had recorded Queen's "We Will Rock You" on it off the radio.

[@Chamber2020]

I understood that reference!

[@georgemorley1029]

“Buddy you’re a boy, make a big noise, turn left after at the pelican crossing, gonna be a big man someday.”

[@TheMusicianTom]

Only if you could travel to the future. We will rock you was released in 1977

[@matthewstarkie4254]

@@Chamber2020 All cassettes eventually become The Best of Queen if left in a car long enough.

[@Chamber2020]

@@matthewstarkie4254 i believe the incubation period for the tape metamorphosis is a fortnight..😁

[@mikeh2006]

Makes sense for hire cars going to specific locations as he said. As long as you don't make a wrong turn. We can laugh at these inventions, but without them we wouldn't be where we are today.

[@El_Gormo]

Literally 🙂

[@mxbx307]

And by "self-drive" hire cars he meant a conventional hire car you drive yourself, rather than a taxi or chauffered limo etc. He doesn't mean "driverless" cars like people are talking about today. But even in those days it would have been insane to drive yourself into Central London from the airport. There were other and better ways.

[@themissinfowar6629]

“But without them, we wouldn’t be were we are today!” Not so sure about that

[@weeardguy]

@@themissinfowar6629 I'm pretty sure this paved the road for any system that came after it. This was this brainfart by someone who, instead of looking at the possible drawbacks first (and then deciding to not even try to build something like this) decided to build this system to see how it would work out. Ofcourse, the drawbacks were there, but at least someone had the courage to try something, most likely inspiring others to try and see how they could improve it. There's a video on a Dutch system from 1984. It's in Dutch and there are no subtitles unfortunately, but you probably get an idea. The program was called 'Wonderous World' and presented by Chriet Titulaer, who presented the viewer the newest advancements in technology, a bit like Tomorrow's World. kzbin.info/www/bejne/f6nCpKV6bKaHosk

[@prebenjaeger]

People who laugh at inventions like this are likely very untechnical themselves and probably have never had an original idea either.

[@robtana2526]

Way better than google maps. I love the hardware technology, very advance for its time.

[@robertonery8358]

Isso sim é uma tecnologia impressionante!!!! O conceito simples e altamente analógico e funcional.

[@russella7263]

Reminds me of the time my girlfriend borrowed my early TomTom GPS to visit a friend in rural Herefordshire. Coming home, she chose ‘home’ as the destination but accidentally also put the GPS into ‘demo’ mode. She followed every instruction the GPS uttered, but as the GPS was only reading out the instructions using a pre calculated time between turns and not calculating her actual position and providing the instructions at the correct junction, she eventually found herself completely lost.

[@danielrose1392]

I remember the first satnav we had at work to receive an update, with the patch the demo mode was automatically deactivated once speeds above 30 km/h where detected. The same error happened multiple times so we went through the pain of updating all devices. If I recall right it took more than 1h per device and we only had one suitable cable.

[@James_Doyle83]

Sat navs are guides only

[@LaRoche_]

Like I said, women and machinery do not mix

[@paulxaphier5488]

Forget everything else, wouldn’t you just love to live in those times again? And I’m only 40!

[@paulxaphier5488]

@The Riddler it’s horrible now mate. I get the fact we can do so much with the internet now, smart phones, great looking cars.. but the world was so clean back then. I mean look at the roads of Britain then. I’d go back any day. Sadly we can’t.

[@krashd]

@@paulxaphier5488 Clean? You need your eyes fixed.

[@paulxaphier5488]

@@krashd you need your eyes fixed mate.. very quick.

[@PapercutzUksocial]

Who would have thought it, this technology is one of the main driving force today in e commerce and in future, driver-less cars

[@oxymoron02]

The fact that he calls it a "cassette of tape" is so indicative of the time.

[@wylancslass]

Amazing to see tailgaters even in the 1970's!

[@davidthomas3826]

The moment he heard Johnny Mathis coming through the speakers instead of "clear, precise directions" was the moment he knew he was lost

[@mrswolls]

I'm actually very impressed by this.. This could have been sold in the early 90s and still have been "futuristic".

[@jackl593]

Hmm but by 1990 Mazda already demoed a gps system in a car. Besides, The public was already aware of the functioning gps constellation by then.

[@ninjathedeadguy2655]

This is the easily the greatest sarcastic bbc archive thing ever 4:32

[@esssexboy]

The amount of different journeys i do I would have to tow a trailer with me full of cassettes.

[@krashd]

One cassette is plenty, after all the cassette only has the phrases recorded on it and you only need so many phrases when giving directions.

[@resolecca]

@@krashd 1:11 "my navagator is this pre recorded cassette of tape on it are all the instructions I need to find my around this route, so if I ever use a different route, I simply use a different cassette" so yes you would need a new tape for literally every single journey

[@wisteela]

I'd seen this before via their Facebook thing, and it's amazing for its time. Also, lovely old VW. Bonus points for driving past those VW vans.

[@thebugzone2568]

Not to mention the ghia cruising along behind

[@noahmizrahi9834]

WOW! The future is here! I can't believe it's 2022 and we have this already wowee

[@eins2001]

It's mindblowing how, while the tech has come very far, the basic system is exactly the same.

[@dansmif]

Back in the 90's I remember using Autoroute for MS-DOS and thought it was revolutionary. It took minutes to calculate the route and then you print it out on bits of paper 😂

[@Haze1434]

Every invention starts as impractical, until it becomes practical with time and improvement.

[@ashwinpstpr]

Decent idea! Love to see such gadgets. Every piece of tech we enjoy today is result of such ideas.

[@petitio_principii]

The gramophone + metal-disk system that they had with horse carriages that was really impressive. You had of course to drive correctly so that the carriage hook would grab and exchange the perforated card that would then slide into the analog mechanical pionola-like computer doing all the work. If you missed one, things could end up really messed.

[@edwardsamokhvalov7733]

aaahahahah

[@warhawk638]

It's actually pretty ingenious for the time, I could see it being applied to some of the things he was talking about, like bus route training or hire cars. Even if it is rather impractical should you come across a closed road, it's still pretty cool.

[@cooptrol]

He was recently spotted inside a floating ice block near the north shore of Greenland.

[@dondiablo5583]

Best times ever, this are the real cars

[@bardo0007]

This is amazing! 1971 ?? Before GPS even was a word. How right they were.

[@rugbydazz2264]

Glad to see Mr Rodd is still very much alive and with us I used to love his watching his reports on Tomorrows World

[@itemushmush]

is he really? i was born waaaay after this video was produced (90s) - he seems like a perfect presenter for the content

[@rugbydazz2264]

@@itemushmush Yes he is 78 now according to Wikipedia.

[@mccockers]

I remember the days of having to stop several times to ask random people for directions, most of whom were clueless and sometimes hard of hearing!

[@SJHFoto]

I find it so mind-boggling that people who live in an area can't give you simple directions

[@Dex99SS]

Wow.... analog versions of advanced tech always blow me tf away.

[@joe-vl3nd]

Happy days Look how clean it was

[@xntricity6446]

I love the mechanical technology, pretty amazing

[@colors6692]

0:10 crazy to think she is only 42 years old in the clip!

[@relentlessmadman]

before gps on road trips I drove and my wife who loves maps was the navigator! now she puts in the distination

[@user-et6pj4db9s]

This is amazing for 1971, it literally is exactly the same as the modern navigator system except its on a cassete tape instead of a computer but even then theres still a computation device fitted in the car. Everytime you think these decades were ancient times you forget at the time they were as modern as you think today is, technology was being devised just the same.

[@philsiverns4227]

Comes complete with a pencil for when the tape tangles.

[@steviewondek]

Always found a Bic pen was better.:D

[@peterstudley1804]

At the 3.30 mark we see two white hillman avengers , these were launched in February 1970 , and judging by the foliage in some shots I'd say this was filmed in may or June of 1971. Those high Street views look lovely, whatever has happened?

[@Cosford869]

Indeed.

[@joz6683]

Thanks for the video remember this show as a child in the 1970's. The analogue future, so full of optimum. I do miss it, the future today seams to be all doom and gloom. Bring back optimum...

[@rudolphguarnacci197]

Real nice blue on that bug. Slightly deeper than the sky blues i'm used to seeing, giving it a warm, rich tone.

[@lovelybitofbugle219]

Can it take me back to this lovely time?!

[@illustriouschin]

You forgot about all the bad stuff then.

[@Ass_Burgers_Syndrome]

@@illustriouschin Bad stuff then was still better than bad stuff now.

[@derekderek2570]

Aw yes nothing lovelier than the Vietnam War

[@merlin5476]

I know, how about someone draws a picture of all the roads ( not scale) and then you look at it to see where you are.. .... perhaps call it a map or something like that. On a serious note though, i loved the lack of cars in the clip.

[@therealcaldini]

That Beetle would be worth thousands today in that condition!

[@gjaeigjiajeg]

Considering it's time, this was cutting edge technology.

[@Dan23_7]

Only takes the wife to record over it with a chart mix and you’re screwed 😂😂

[@royalbloodedledgend]

The good ol’ days

[@pablobon5957]

I love how people from that generation had such a rich way of speaking.

[@chrisjacksonuk]

i used to watch it religiously....thank you

[@spacecommanderal3176]

Pretty fancy! In the 1950s in the US, you could send away to AAA for a paper, scrolling navigation map, working similarly to how this tracked where to play the tape.

[@kyledavis4890]

Came here for the glorious beetle (even though at the time it may have been only 9 years old. Stayed for the British accent and phrasing. Cassette of tape.)

[@RyanSchweitzer77]

Or "zeh-bra crossing". :)

[@IAMPLEDGE]

there is no such thing as a British accent.

[@Deano-Dron81]

@@IAMPLEDGE There is no such thing as an out right American accent either. I think they just mock us now a days. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Can’t blame them. 😂

[@gerthen2]

application in a self driving cars being noted in a 50 year old video showcases how far we are from actual self driving cars

[@mick0846]

It's almost like they could predict the future back then. What amazing exciting times they must have been

[@davidt-rex2062]

They also predicted mini disks would replace vds and you could go to a kiosk to get a new album.