handheld gps under 100
Why have car manufacturers never installed compasses as standard equipment on cars?
This is the most basic and simple navigation tool since the dawn of time. Boat manufacturers install them as standard equipment, why not car manufacturers? I know you can get them as ‘luxury’ items, as digital compasses.
I am aware that you can’t put compasses too close to the dash, due to EM interference; however, compasses work fine when stuck on the winshield or near the sunvisor.
Every car I’ve had, I’ve gone out and bought a compass for. This should not be necessary.
People are so lazy today, they can’t even look at a paper map. Also, they pay $5000 for a talking gps display when you can get a handheld gps for under $100. Microsoft Streets makes a gps receiver and software you can plug into your laptop or pda for under $100, and it talks too.
Why are people and car makers so navigationally lazy? Your thoughts?
They’ve never been standard equipment anywhere that I know of, ever. Part of it may have been the compensation necessary to have a plain magnetic compass function properly in a car; you’re always fooling with it and the readings aren’t always so great. A magnetic compass also does notably strange things on a steel bridge.
But I strongly suspect that it’s simply tradition. Nobody used a compass in a wagon, so nobody thought to ask for one in a car. Road maps didn’t come along until the AAA started printing them in the 1920′s, at which point auto equipment and accessories were pretty much fixed into the pattern we find them today: my 1927 Sears catalog’s auto section looks a lot like Wal-mart’s, though in the 1920′s such things as oil filters and temperature gauges were still considered extras. (I never checked in that catalog to see if there were compasses.)
In the US, popular culture classifies an auto compass as a sign that you’ve reached retirement age, though I’ve never accepted that. I love them. The digital variety doesn’t need any compensation and is unaffected by the steel in the car.
