Navigation over 40 years ago
10/09/2015
In 1978, a large-scale trial with Blaupunkt ALI, a traffic control solution that indirectly gave rise to today's navigation systems, was launched on certain sections of highway in Germany.
Because it was not possible to use satellites at that time, the Blaupunkt system was based on induction loops in the road, which could be used to exchange the necessary information between the central computer and the vehicle.
The driver simply entered his destination (as an abbreviation) and, as soon as he moved over the first induction loop, he was guided and provided with important information, which could also include the road conditions.
In contrast to today's solutions, ALI was not dependent on traffic reports reaching the device via radio or similar, as the central computer was always aware of the traffic flow across all induction loops.
Overall, this solution had many advantages, for example, the cost of the display device was only DM 200. And everything worked well in the test. In practice, however, high investments were required to lay the induction loops - although Blaupunkt was only talking about around DM 350 million for the entire highway network of the Federal Republic of Germany - and a nationwide expansion (even beyond national borders) was difficult to imagine.
In 1989, Blaupunkt presented the TravelPilot, the first real navigation device for Europe that was ready for series production, and of course it was no longer dependent on induction loops.
