Top 10 oldest technologies in your car

The advent of high-beam assistance comprised a phototube mounted on top of the dashboard. The invention was the brainchild of General Motors Guide Lamp Division, its Autronic Eye, as it was originally known, using a light-sensing (photonic) cylinder to detect oncoming light and signal an amplifier relay to trigger low beam.

Being the 1950s, the Autronic Eye looked like a ray gun from outer space, the device coupled to a complicated (and rather large) array of capacitors and vacuum tubes to tell the Autronic Brain to dip the headlights.

Of course early high-beam assist systems only worked in line of sight, and couldn’t detect cars coming over crests or around corners. In these situations, the driver would have to dip the headlights themselves. Later systems also had cool names like Guide-Matic, Twilight Sentinel and Autolamp.

Speed control as it was known from 1900 to 1910 used a mechanism to lock the throttle at a set position, roughly maintaining a desired speed. But the modern adaptation of cruise control is the brainchild of American inventor Ralph Teetor, and dates back to 1948.

Teetor’s system used a complicated mechanical drive from the gearbox to regulate the throttle, whereas modern systems use vacuum servomechanisms and even computerised drive-by-wire systems to maintain cruising speed at a pre-set maximum.

The first adaptive cruise control system was made by Mitsubishi in 1992 and used lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) to detect the vehicle ahead and adjust the car’s speed accordingly. Modern systems use stereoscopic camera or radar.

Earlier ‘automatic’ transmissions, like the planetary system in Henry Ford’s Model T (1908) do exist. But the hydraulically actuated self-shifting transmission common to modern applications originated with two Brazilian engineers, Jose Braz Araripe and Fernando Lehly Lemos in 1932.

They sold their prototype to General Motors, which in 1939 perfected the three-speed Hydra-Matic transmission, a unit which incidentally was first lubricated by whale oil!
The Hydra-Matic transmission’s ratios were changed in conjunction with throttle position and road speed, and changed up and down gears depending on operating conditions. GM sold the patent to other manufacturers including Bentley, Hudson, Kaiser, Nash and Rolls-Royce.

Mercedes-Benz introduced the first four-speed Hydra-Matic transmission later the same decade.

Another idea we all attribute to the Toyota Prius is the petrol-electric hybrid engine. The idea in fact dates back to the late 1920s and was devised by American firm, General Electric.

The idea saw a generator fitted to the flywheel that in turn powered an electric motor that drove the rear axle. As the petrol engine’s speed increased, so too did the electric motor's output and the speed of the car. GE said the vehicle had an ‘around town’ speed of 40mph (64km/h), but could keep pace with petrol-powered models on the open road by changing the gear ratio of the rear axle.

One of the advertised benefits of the ‘hybrid’ car was not only its improved fuel economy, but that it did away with the conventional clutch and gearbox. A speed and direction lever instead made the car able to travel at low or high speeds, or in reverse. Reverse was achieved by reversing the polarity of the DC electric motor.

Indicators, directional flashers, blinkers, turn signals… whatever your name for them, the little flashing light we use to ‘indicate’ our intended direction replaced hand signals from as early as 1907, but wasn’t commonly installed in production cars until 1938.

The flashing light replaced semaphores called trafficators, and blink at a standardised rate of once per second. Both replaced hand signals which were hard to see at night, and often not used in wet weather for obvious reasons (i.e. no one wanted a wet arm).

No one really knows exactly who is responsible for the modern indicator, but the idea is widely credited to Italian inventor, Alfredo Barrachini. The indicator was improved with the sequential indicator in 1965 (Ford Thunderbird) while the four-way flashers or ‘hazard lights’ followed a year later in 1966.

It seems like only yesterday red ‘turbo’ badges meant you drove something a little special. Of course, nowadays even regular family hatchbacks are turbocharged, but it might surprise you to know the original patent for exhaust-driven forced induction dates all the way back to 1905.

Patented by Swiss engineer Alfred Buchi, the turbocharger took 20 years to become a viable means of increasing engine power. It was originally used on large diesel engines, specifically in marine, railway and aviation applications.

The first mainstream use of turbocharging in a petrol-powered passenger car was the Jetfire option on the 1962 Oldsmobile Cutlass V8. The first diesel-powered passenger car with turbocharging was the 1978 Mercedes-Benz 300SD.

Although early patents for the motorised windscreen wiper date back to as early as 1896, the closest model to that used today dates to 1903.

Three inventors claim to have been the first to patent the windscreen wiper, but it’s American inventor Mary Anderson and her Window Cleaning Device that became the blueprint for the first automatic electric wiper.

The windscreen wiper was first fitted to production cars from 1917, the first intermittent wiper in 1923, and the first windscreen washer system in 1931.

Although most modern cars use disc brakes, there are many commercial applications – including the rear-end of many dual-cab utes – that still use the old-fashioned drum brake.

The drum brake uses a pair of pivoting ‘shoes’ to create friction on an outward rotating cylinder and was first used by Maybach in 1900. Louis Renault patented the idea two years later, his woven asbestos shoe linings continuing to commonly arrest the progress of production cars until the late 1960s.

Over the years drum brakes have been activated via mechanical linkages, rods, cables, and pneumatic and hydraulic systems, the latter first patented in 1917 (and still used today).

Only a few years older than the car itself, the ‘cigarette lighter receptacle’ was designed by German inventor Friedrich Wilhelm Schindler in the early 1880s.

The receptacle used DC electrical current to warm the ‘cigar lighter’ or Cigarrenanzünder, and eventually became used as a de facto power outlet for innumerable six and 12-volt auto accessories. It was officially patented by English manufacturer Morris in 1921, and became the standard cigarette lighter in American vehicles from 1925 to the present day.

Many modern cars have ditched the cigarette lighter element as we know it, but retain Schindler’s receptacle to supply 12-volt DC power to portable devices. Some things never change.

What’s unusual about the auxiliary audio plug as we know it is that although over 140 years old, it wasn’t widely used in car audio systems until the early 1990s.

Originally devised for use in telephone exchanges, the ‘audio jack’, as it’s properly known, became a way to connect personal music players (and later mobile phones) to a car’s stereo before the advent of USB and wireless audio streaming (Bluetooth) became popular.

Available in a multitude of sizes, the audio jack common to vehicle applications is 3.5mm in diameter, and more correctly known as a ‘mini phono’. Its invention is credited to American electrical engineer George W Coy.