WEBVTT - Driverless Cars: The Early Concepts 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.680 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:16.840 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:19.080 how Stuff Works, and I heart radio and I love 0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:22.680 all things tech and I mentioned a few weeks ago 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:27.080 that I was planning a suite of episodes about driverless cars, 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:30.960 including the history of developing them, the challenges we face 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:35.440 in implementing them, the potential benefits that autonomous vehicles could have, 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:38.680 and how long it might be before we see truly 0:00:38.840 --> 0:00:43.280 driverless cars deployed on a wide scale basis, also whether 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:46.640 or not they'll hit the road before they're ready. Now, today, 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:49.440 we're going to start that journey by talking about a 0:00:49.520 --> 0:00:54.320 time when the idea of driverless cars was mostly science fiction. Also, 0:00:54.520 --> 0:00:57.240 I think it's important to understand that the development of 0:00:57.280 --> 0:01:01.040 self driving cars is not a linear your story with 0:01:01.080 --> 0:01:04.679 a solid narrative. It's not a leads to be leads 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:08.360 to see a lot of people have worked on developing 0:01:08.400 --> 0:01:13.520 the technology independently, sometimes from very different perspectives and philosophies, 0:01:13.720 --> 0:01:17.680 but all heading towards a common goal. These projects can 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:21.160 sometimes overlap each other in time without having any direct 0:01:21.240 --> 0:01:24.840 connection between them, so you could have independent studies happening 0:01:24.840 --> 0:01:27.840 throughout the world. So I'm just gonna cover some of 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:30.560 the big, really important ones, but just no, there were 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:33.160 a lot of people working on this at various times 0:01:33.160 --> 0:01:37.120 throughout our history. I'm gonna stick as close to a 0:01:37.200 --> 0:01:42.600 chronological timeline as I can, but it will involve jumping 0:01:42.600 --> 0:01:46.559 around a little bit in time, just because otherwise I'd 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:50.160 be saying, meanwhile, blah blah blah was happening, and then 0:01:50.480 --> 0:01:52.320 so and so was doing this, and it was just 0:01:52.520 --> 0:01:55.160 turned into a really hackneyed kind of like radio mystery. 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:57.720 I don't want that to happen. So picking a starting 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:02.360 point is actually pretty darned tricky too, because the technology 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:08.160 of autonomous cars spans lots of different fields. You could 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:11.560 go into all sorts of technologies and talk about the 0:02:11.600 --> 0:02:16.000 development and how the evolution of those technologies eventually found 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:18.839 their way into autonomous cars, and if I dug too 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:22.760 deep in that rabbit hole, this series would last maybe 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:26.160 thirty episodes. We'd be talking about the development of the automobile, 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:30.200 we'd be talking about development of cameras. I kind of 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:33.160 like how Wired did it? In a piece that was 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:36.640 published in twenty sixteen titled quote a brief history of 0:02:36.680 --> 0:02:40.920 autonomous vehicle technology end quote. And as that name suggests, 0:02:41.400 --> 0:02:44.680 that article went beyond self driving cars, and the first 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:48.440 item on that list actually dates all the way back 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:53.960 to fifteen hundred or thereabouts, and a famous turtle named Leonardo. 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:59.320 I'm sorry, tari Is tar is telling me that's the throng. Leonardo. 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:02.720 Leonardo was not actually a turtle, but apparently some sort 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:09.120 of renowned renaissance artist and proto scientists. Okay, Leonardo da Vinci. Okay, 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:13.360 all right, I was was way off base there, Thanks Harry. Anyway, 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:18.360 the story of his invention comes to us courtesy of 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:23.520 the Codex Atlanticus, Folio eight twelve r, in which da 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:27.480 Vinci describes the creation of a cart that would use 0:03:27.680 --> 0:03:31.680 springs and gears. The springs would store energy, and the 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:35.080 gears and the cogs would drive the wheels and steering mechanisms, 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:39.280 so that this cart, once wound up and quote unquote programmed, 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:43.680 could travel and steer on its own power. So you 0:03:43.680 --> 0:03:48.160 would change these settings around, and that would allow the 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:52.920 cart to not just travel across a distance, but also 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:56.320 turn left or right, depending upon the settings that you 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:59.640 had selected. I imagine this was largely done through various 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:03.080 gears that once it hit a certain point of its revolution, 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:06.760 it would engage the steering mechanism, But honestly, I don't 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:10.440 know the full details. Uh If da Vinci ever built 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:12.600 one of these for real z s. The working model 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:16.880 did not survive the passage of time, but modern enthusiasts 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:22.200 have attempted to recreate this self driving cart, which we 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:25.720 now believe was intended for use in theatrical productions. It 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:29.840 wasn't meant to do practical work on like manual labor 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:31.960 or anything like that. It was meant to be part 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:36.400 of a show that you would have this cart go across, 0:04:36.440 --> 0:04:39.640 perhaps as an effect, maybe it's carrying some sort of 0:04:39.640 --> 0:04:42.400 piece of scenery or an actor or something. But Da 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:46.400 Vinci's drawings and designs, we're not step by step instructions, 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:50.680 and so any recreation of this invention has to be 0:04:50.720 --> 0:04:54.240 done with a healthy dose of interpretation on the part 0:04:54.360 --> 0:04:56.760 of the builders. They have to start kind of filling 0:04:56.800 --> 0:05:00.200 in the gaps and making, you know, best guesses. But 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:03.359 some people, such as the staff at Wired, point to 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:06.560 this as an early example of a vehicle that can 0:05:06.640 --> 0:05:10.480 drive itself. Though to be fair, da Vinci's design required 0:05:10.600 --> 0:05:13.760 some humans to pre set the device so that it 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:15.719 would do what it was supposed to do. So you 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:20.279 couldn't just, you know, tell the cart I need you 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:23.880 to cross upstage left. You would actually have to quote 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:28.320 unquote program it. Now, no discussion about the early days 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:32.800 of driver less cars would be complete without acknowledging the 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:39.279 accomplishments of someone known as Francis P. Houdina. He is 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:42.560 credited in various articles as being an electrical engineer for 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:46.200 the Army, and once he left the service, he founded 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:50.440 a company called the Houdina Radio Control Company. I'll have 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:53.680 more to say about Francis in a second, but let's 0:05:53.680 --> 0:05:55.760 get to the heart of the matter as far as 0:05:55.800 --> 0:06:01.480 autonomous cars go. Back in ninet, the Houdina Radio Control 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:05.400 Company engaged in a major publicity stunt. It happened on 0:06:05.480 --> 0:06:11.360 July when a car dubbed the Lendrick in Wonder, though 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:17.000 sometimes it is credited as the American Wonder, roamed the 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:20.800 streets of New York City without a driver behind the wheel. 0:06:21.200 --> 0:06:24.039 In fact, there was no one in the car whatsoever. 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:27.080 There was someone standing on the sideboard of the car, 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:30.600 the running board so they were perched on the outside 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:32.920 where they could reach in and grab the wheel, but 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:38.599 no one was actually sitting in the driver's seat Ellie, 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:41.159 and no one was apparently in control, at least not 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:43.080 directly behind the wheel. But as the name of the 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:46.360 company would indicate the line, Rick in Wonder was a 0:06:46.480 --> 0:06:50.480 radio controlled car like a toy r C Cards, just 0:06:50.760 --> 0:06:54.400 instead of being a toy, it was a full sized automobile. 0:06:55.480 --> 0:06:59.719 Circuits connecting to motors would control the movements of the gearshift, 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:03.640 the accelerator, the brakes, the steering wheel. Actual control of 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:07.440 the vehicle came from an apparatus inside a following car, 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:11.880 So you'd have a car operated by a regular human 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:15.040 driver sitting in the driver's seat. In the passenger seat 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:17.880 would be the operator for the radio controlled car that 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:21.120 would travel in front of them. So the car was 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:26.120 not truly driverless because the driver did exist. It's just 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:30.080 the driver was in another vehicle. While researching this episode, 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:33.040 I found a New York Times article that described the event, 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:37.480 and it doesn't sound like it was a complete success. 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:41.440 From that article, these are quotes. A loose housing around 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:43.920 the shaft to the steering wheel in the radio car 0:07:44.280 --> 0:07:48.320 caused the uncertain course as the procession got underway, as 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:51.880 John Alexander of the Houdina Company, riding in the second car, 0:07:52.160 --> 0:07:56.880 applied the radio waves the directing apparatus attached to the shaft, 0:07:56.920 --> 0:08:00.320 and the other automobile failed to grasp it prop really. 0:08:00.720 --> 0:08:04.200 As a result, the radio car careened from left to 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:09.160 right down Broadway, around Columbus Circle and south on Fifth Avenue, 0:08:09.360 --> 0:08:12.920 almost running down two trucks and a milk wagon, which 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:17.480 took to the curbs for safety. At Street, Houdina lunged 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:20.400 for the steering wheel, but could not prevent the car 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:24.640 from crashing into the fender of an automobile filled with cameramen. 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:28.200 It was at Fort Street that a crash into a 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:32.560 fire engine was barely averted. The police advised Judina to 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:35.600 postpone his experiments, but after the car had been driven 0:08:35.720 --> 0:08:39.360 up Broadway, it was once more operated by radio along 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:43.840 Central Park drives. And uh, here's that bit about Francis 0:08:43.880 --> 0:08:47.960 Judina I was mentioning earlier. You may have noticed that 0:08:48.080 --> 0:08:52.199 the name bears some passing resemblance to that of Harry Houdini, 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:55.400 who was alive at that same time. He was the 0:08:55.440 --> 0:08:59.800 famous escape artist and magician Now, according to the story, 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:03.680 and there are at least some court documents to back 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:07.960 this up, the post office was sometimes in the habit 0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:10.559 of delivering some of the mail meant for the Houdina 0:09:10.679 --> 0:09:17.080 Company to Houdini the magician, including bills, and Houdini was 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:20.600 not crazy about getting the bills from some other company 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:23.800 and he felt that it was encroaching upon his name. 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:27.240 So he marched on over to the Houdina Radio Company 0:09:27.360 --> 0:09:31.480 headquarters and a scuffle broke out after he started raising 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:34.280 a fuss. The head of the office, a guy named 0:09:34.360 --> 0:09:38.760 George Young, filed charges against Houdini for disorderly conduct, but 0:09:38.960 --> 0:09:41.320 on the day that Houdini was to appear in court, 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:45.360 Young failed to show up, and so all charges were dismissed. 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:49.640 Now there's a guy named Dean Carnegie who posted a 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:52.680 few years ago that he had been contacted by the 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:56.880 son of the person who called himself Francis Houdina, and 0:09:56.880 --> 0:10:00.640 that Judina was a pseudonym. And further, he says that 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:05.600 the son of Houdina revealed that this scuffle was all 0:10:05.640 --> 0:10:08.480 just a publicity stunt, that Houdini had thought it up 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:11.920 and they had all worked on it together. I do 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:15.160 find it odd to have gone through all this trouble 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:20.680 to take on a pseudonym, establish a company, create a 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:24.200 demonstration of a radio controlled car, and all in an 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:28.079 effort to set up a big PR stunt with a magician. 0:10:28.360 --> 0:10:31.360 It seems to me like that's an awful lot of 0:10:31.360 --> 0:10:33.600 trouble to go through before you get to a point 0:10:33.600 --> 0:10:36.560 where you can hold this PR stunt. But I guess 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:39.479 if someone was going to do it, it would be Houdini. 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:43.800 I am highly skeptical that it was in fact a 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:48.280 publicity stunt, only because, as I say, it's an awful 0:10:48.320 --> 0:10:50.280 lot of trouble to go through in order to do it, 0:10:50.320 --> 0:10:54.440 and it wouldn't necessarily bring good publicity, I would imagine. 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:57.079 I just thought I would share the story because when 0:10:57.080 --> 0:11:00.440 I was doing the research, it kept popping up. Now, 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:04.560 this Houdina radio controlled vehicle was not the only one 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:07.560 of its kind. There were some other people who also 0:11:07.679 --> 0:11:12.079 built full size radio controlled apparatus for cars. There were 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:15.520 a few in the twenties and thirties, and in general 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:19.240 people would start calling these phantom cars because they appeared 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:21.880 to be driven by an invisible phantom, but all of 0:11:21.880 --> 0:11:25.600 them were actually controlled by a remote driver. Those controls 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:29.480 might not resemble those of a typical automobile, but they 0:11:29.520 --> 0:11:34.360 would end up controlling motors that would affect the automobiles 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:40.320 regular operations, and according to various accounts, some of these 0:11:40.320 --> 0:11:43.760 would be controlled by follow cars, sometimes by someone on 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:47.880 the street, sometimes by someone following in a low flying aircraft. 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:51.920 It all just depends upon the account. In nineteen thirty nine, 0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:55.760 at the New York World's Fair, General Motors presented an 0:11:55.800 --> 0:11:59.839 exhibit called Future Rama And it was not a and 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:03.280 aimated series by Matt Graining. It was something else. It 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:07.280 was a vision of the far off future of nineteen 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:12.840 sixty and the General Motors exhibit was a ride. Essentially, 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:17.280 visitors would get on these cars, these chair cars, and 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:21.520 be pulled through this exhibit, where there was an enormous 0:12:21.679 --> 0:12:26.760 scale model. One part of this vision, which encompassed lots 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:30.360 of different thoughts about the future, was the Motorway of 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:33.959 the future, and the vision included a sort of driver 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:39.440 assist system in cars. They described an electro magnetic breaking 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:42.320 system that would engage if one car were to get 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:44.680 too close to the car ahead of it, and cars 0:12:44.679 --> 0:12:48.600 would be traveling down lanes that would have raised walls 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:52.640 on either side, sort of like guiding slots. So it 0:12:52.720 --> 0:12:55.440 sounded like GM was pretty sure cars would still be 0:12:55.559 --> 0:12:58.360 under the control of human beings even in the far 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:01.040 off future world of nineteen six team, but there would 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:04.679 be some automated elements that would find their way into 0:13:04.760 --> 0:13:07.560 vehicle operation. And these days we would say that that 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:09.960 vision of the future was pretty much on the money, 0:13:10.040 --> 0:13:13.240 except for the part about it being nine, because it 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:17.199 took a little longer than that. Norman bell Getz, who 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:20.920 designed this exhibit for General Motors, described a couple of 0:13:20.920 --> 0:13:25.720 possible methods for controlling traffic in the future using radio waves, 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:28.400 and in one he envisioned a system that would include 0:13:28.440 --> 0:13:32.160 numerous broadcast towers along the side of the road, and 0:13:32.240 --> 0:13:36.120 so cars would maintain contact with these broadcast towers. But 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:39.960 another version, he suggested the possibility of an electrical conductor 0:13:40.120 --> 0:13:43.640 embedded in the road itself for direct control, and that 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:47.040 would be a method that a lot of different people 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:50.520 would look into over the next few years. Today we 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:53.520 would say that such an enormous system is probably unlikely 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:58.080 because of the huge investment it would require an infrastructure 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:00.200 that would come along with it. But back in the 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:03.720 nineteen thirties, the US highway system was still developing, it 0:14:03.760 --> 0:14:07.080 was still being built across the country, so it's probably 0:14:07.120 --> 0:14:09.199 seen as more of a possibility. After all, we were 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:12.320 already connecting distant parts of the country to each other, 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:15.559 so couldn't we just go to the extra effort to 0:14:15.760 --> 0:14:19.280 wire all of that in some way. I have more 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:22.480 to say about this version of autonomous cars and how 0:14:22.520 --> 0:14:25.840 that evolved into what we think of as an autonomous 0:14:25.840 --> 0:14:27.960 car today, but first let's take a quick break to 0:14:28.040 --> 0:14:39.480 thank our sponsor. In nineteen thirty six, a magazine called 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:43.200 Modern Mechanics published an article about a different method for 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:47.320 autonomous control of a vehicle. This version would include building 0:14:47.320 --> 0:14:51.000 cars that had special photo cells on them to detect 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:54.920 specific frequencies of light. The car it self would project 0:14:55.400 --> 0:14:58.080 this light. It would have a projector of some sort 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:00.600 on the front of the car, and then in the 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:04.640 road itself would be steel mirrors that could reflect the 0:15:04.720 --> 0:15:07.720 light back at the car, and the photocells would pick 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:10.800 up that light. The article pointed out that cars were 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:14.400 already approaching the limits of human reflexes. This idea that 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:19.000 we were starting to drive faster than we could react. Um, 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:23.760 I guess, uh you know, good old uh Jack of 0:15:23.800 --> 0:15:26.280 the Pork Shop Express would say he never, he never 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:29.960 drives faster than he can see. But we know that 0:15:30.040 --> 0:15:33.080 human reflexes have their limits. So this article mainly focused 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:36.400 on the link between the photo cells and the steering 0:15:36.440 --> 0:15:40.200 mechanism for the car. That leaves a lot of questions unanswered, 0:15:40.240 --> 0:15:43.720 such as how the car would accelerate or break, would 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:46.960 there still be a human responsible for those operations, and 0:15:47.000 --> 0:15:49.400 the only thing that would be taken off the plate 0:15:49.520 --> 0:15:52.560 of the human driver is steering the car. One also 0:15:52.560 --> 0:15:55.640 wonders exactly how any one car would deal with the 0:15:55.680 --> 0:16:01.280 presence of other cars on the road that are similarly outfitted. Right, 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:03.400 So if you have a whole bunch of cars that 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:07.680 use this technology and it's dependent upon light being reflected 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:10.920 back at them, what happens when you start getting the 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:13.600 signals from one car picked up by another, or what 0:16:13.680 --> 0:16:16.240 happens if you're driving on a really sunny day or 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:19.880 in really bad weather like fog or rain. But the 0:16:19.880 --> 0:16:23.240 point is people were already thinking about alternatives to radio 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:27.560 controls even in the thirties. In nineteen fifty three, Arthur 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:31.840 mac Barrett created what he called a driverless vehicle he 0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:35.360 mounted a wire in the ceiling of a warehouse, and 0:16:35.400 --> 0:16:38.240 he had a specially outfitted vehicle. In this case, it 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:42.760 was a towing tractor that could follow that wire, and 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:45.720 in later versions he would bury the wire within the 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:48.880 floor of a facility. And he called this system the 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:53.440 guide O Matic. Now this was not meant for cars necessarily, 0:16:54.040 --> 0:16:56.520 but it was based on similar principles to some of 0:16:56.560 --> 0:16:59.440 the more sci fi ideas that were proposed in the 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:02.920 nineteen thirties. So we started seeing it actually being put 0:17:02.920 --> 0:17:04.880 to use in the fifties, and in fact, this kind 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:08.320 of system is still used to this day, but obviously 0:17:08.400 --> 0:17:10.960 with a much more sophisticated equipment than what was available 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:16.120 in the fifties. In Disney Studios produced a segment titled 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:20.960 Magic Highway USA as part of The Wonderful World of Disney, 0:17:21.080 --> 0:17:24.439 and the piece included some humorous gags about what the 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:28.359 future of driving could be, just based off jokes really, 0:17:28.400 --> 0:17:31.080 but after that was a more measured look, a more 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:35.080 thoughtful look at the future of driving. Still had some 0:17:35.119 --> 0:17:38.080 pretty far out ideas in it. Now it did include 0:17:38.119 --> 0:17:40.879 some practical stuff that has in fact come to pass. 0:17:40.960 --> 0:17:44.360 For example, the idea that signage is going to need 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:47.640 to be larger and simpler so that motorists traveling at 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:50.960 great speed can read and understand the road signs in general. 0:17:51.320 --> 0:17:54.600 That did come to pass. It also predicted a road 0:17:54.640 --> 0:17:57.600 system that would be able to retain heat to keep 0:17:57.600 --> 0:18:01.720 it dry even in snowstorms. That has not happened. It 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:04.399 does sound a lot like some of the smart road 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:08.600 systems that were being peddled no no pun intended around 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:11.240 a few years ago. You may remember those the smart 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:14.080 highways that we're supposed to be made up of photo cells, 0:18:14.520 --> 0:18:18.840 solar cells essentially, and they could soak up light, generate electricity, 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:22.600 and even be warmed so that snow and ice woulden 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:25.480 form on them. Those have not really panned out so well, 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:31.040 at least not in any widespread application. However, some of 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:36.280 the other bits in that magic Highway section included predictions 0:18:36.320 --> 0:18:40.080 similar to GPS and rear mounted cameras on cars, so 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:43.640 we do have those, although the one that was proposed 0:18:43.640 --> 0:18:46.720 in the piece was more of a full time rear 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:49.719 view camera, so instead of having a rear view mirror, 0:18:50.000 --> 0:18:53.200 you would have a rear view screen that you would 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:57.200 consistently looked to for information about what's going on. Behind 0:18:57.240 --> 0:18:59.880 the car. Some of the other predictions did not pan 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:03.320 out in any way, shape or form, such as tunneling 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:08.320 by atomic energy. Yeah, the actual special suggested that we 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:13.200 use an enormous like atomic ray cannon essentially that would 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:16.560 melt a hole through the side of a mountain when 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:19.000 we needed to build a tunnel for a highway. That 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:23.040 clearly has not happened. But the special then goes on 0:19:23.080 --> 0:19:25.440 to suggest that in the future will get in our 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:28.600 family vehicles and with a push of a few buttons, 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:32.160 which in the specials depicted as physical slighter controls kind 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:35.120 of like you would see on a on a stereo 0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:39.200 or a soundboard, we would select our destination and an 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:43.359 electronic system incorporating the vehicle and the road itself, so 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:46.800 it would be a system that has both internal components 0:19:46.800 --> 0:19:49.240 in the car and external components in the environment would 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:52.480 take care of everything else. So again this vision hinges 0:19:52.600 --> 0:19:55.760 on that sort of smart highway concept, the idea that 0:19:56.160 --> 0:19:59.280 a lot of this work is being done by the 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:03.520 infrastr ructure, not just the vehicle. Disney was just one 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:07.320 company to promote this kind of idea. America's Electric Light 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:11.720 and Power companies ran an advertisement in the Saturday Evening 0:20:11.760 --> 0:20:14.800 post in the nineteen fifties with an illustration that showed 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:19.919 the stereotypical nineteen fifties American family depicted as it was 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:22.160 at that time in the medium, which is to say 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:26.280 it was a white upper class or upper middle class 0:20:26.320 --> 0:20:29.200 at least family. There was a father, mother's son, and daughter, 0:20:29.280 --> 0:20:32.680 so that kind of stereotypical family. All four of those 0:20:32.720 --> 0:20:35.280 family members are inside a car that has sort of 0:20:35.320 --> 0:20:37.720 like that big glass bubble kind of approach, sort of 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:40.240 what you would see in something like the Jetsons, and 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:43.760 they're all facing inward toward each other. A couple of 0:20:43.840 --> 0:20:47.440 them are playing dominoes, they're having conversation. No one's having 0:20:47.440 --> 0:20:50.720 to drive right, the car itself is doing it. And 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:53.320 the ad talks about how the electric age will lead 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:56.760 to automation and efficiency in all sorts of areas, including 0:20:56.800 --> 0:21:00.679 stuff like flat TV screens and vehicles control by quote 0:21:00.760 --> 0:21:05.800 electronic devices embedded in the road end quote. Now keep 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:08.000 in mind again this is in the post World War 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:11.760 two era. This is an era in which America's industry 0:21:11.840 --> 0:21:16.280 was a key component of national identity. It was part 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:18.840 of what people thought of when they were asked the 0:21:18.920 --> 0:21:22.160 question what is it to be American industry and innovation 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:28.240 were very much, really important components of that identity. And 0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:33.720 these weren't just concepts. These weren't just artists and advertisers saying, 0:21:34.040 --> 0:21:36.920 let's come up with some sort of wild idea. There 0:21:36.920 --> 0:21:40.479 were engineers who were actively building cars and test roads 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:44.840 to work out the actual details. Joseph Bidwell and Lawrence 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:48.560 Hofstad who were researchers with General motors outfitted in nineteen 0:21:49.240 --> 0:21:51.960 Chevrolet with pickup coils to work with a road that 0:21:52.040 --> 0:21:55.240 had embedded electrical wire in it. The coils were connected 0:21:55.240 --> 0:21:57.560 to motors that could adjust the cars steering so that 0:21:57.680 --> 0:22:00.159 can continue to follow the wire below, very much much 0:22:00.240 --> 0:22:03.600 like the guide Oh Manic that talked about earlier. Meanwhile, 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:07.359 over at our c A another smarty pants was working 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:11.720 on this challenge. This would be Vladimir Zwarakin, which some 0:22:11.880 --> 0:22:14.639 of you people may know as one of the pioneers 0:22:14.640 --> 0:22:18.439 who played a really big part in the development of television. 0:22:18.720 --> 0:22:21.560 In fact, depending upon whom you ask, it was Warrikin, 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:26.199 not farms Worth who was pioneer of TV. But honestly, 0:22:26.240 --> 0:22:28.520 it's a very complicated story, and I've talked about before 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:30.280 on tech stuff so I'm not gonna go into it here, 0:22:30.320 --> 0:22:35.520 but back to driverless cars. His concept included embedding circuits 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:39.400 in the roads that would be able to sense vehicles magnetically, 0:22:40.040 --> 0:22:43.359 and his vision had the circuits identifying the speed and 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:47.679 position of vehicles, which would provide information to a centralized 0:22:47.680 --> 0:22:51.000 system that could then send out instructions to specific cars 0:22:51.359 --> 0:22:54.080 in order to manage traffic. And his idea turned out 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:58.439 to be impractical for widespread deployment for autonomous cars. However, 0:22:59.200 --> 0:23:02.520 it did becomes sort of the foundation for car sensing 0:23:02.600 --> 0:23:06.320 loops that are under many intersections. They're used to help 0:23:06.320 --> 0:23:09.960 control traffic lights. Those loops that can detect if there's 0:23:09.960 --> 0:23:13.280 a vehicle on top of it through the electromagnetic effect 0:23:13.720 --> 0:23:16.239 and thus send a signal to the traffic lights that 0:23:16.560 --> 0:23:20.160 they should switch over soon so that they change the 0:23:20.200 --> 0:23:23.960 direction of traffic. That's pretty cool. A key component in 0:23:24.040 --> 0:23:27.080 many of these concepts was that the system for control 0:23:27.560 --> 0:23:31.520 lay outside of the vehicle itself. It required some sort 0:23:31.560 --> 0:23:35.680 of larger centralized system to handle things, and the cars 0:23:35.760 --> 0:23:38.800 would respond to commands from that system. A car might 0:23:38.880 --> 0:23:41.520 have some components abort it to help with this, but 0:23:41.640 --> 0:23:44.359 for the most part, the important elements were external to 0:23:44.400 --> 0:23:47.560 the vehicle. So why was that? Why were we thinking 0:23:48.200 --> 0:23:53.040 outside the car? Well, keep in mind that before we 0:23:53.160 --> 0:23:57.160 did not have transistors, so electronics were very large and bulky, 0:23:57.320 --> 0:24:01.520 and even the seven transistor was not a practical component 0:24:01.560 --> 0:24:04.080 that you would incorporate into a finished product. So it 0:24:04.119 --> 0:24:07.680 would be a few years before transistors would really play 0:24:07.720 --> 0:24:11.479 an important role in consumer technology, and mentorization was just 0:24:11.560 --> 0:24:14.800 getting started in the fifties and sixties, so computers were 0:24:15.000 --> 0:24:18.320 enormous machines that would take up at least a desk, 0:24:18.800 --> 0:24:23.200 but sometimes an entire room. So driving, because it's such 0:24:23.200 --> 0:24:27.320 a complicated task, meant it wasn't really practical to create 0:24:27.359 --> 0:24:30.840 a fully autonomous car. The computer you would need to 0:24:31.000 --> 0:24:34.480 calculate all the different decisions that would be made in 0:24:34.600 --> 0:24:37.199 order to drive a vehicle would be bigger than the 0:24:37.280 --> 0:24:39.879 car was. It made more sense to look outside the 0:24:39.960 --> 0:24:42.359 vehicle for the components that would be needed for a 0:24:42.440 --> 0:24:46.600