At times, inventors of ages past showed enormous ingenuity in the construction of their charmingly intricate devices. Other times? They just took an existing idea and, bereft of creativity, made it smaller, more fiddly and less functional. Come to think of it, not much has changed: only the aesthetics.
At first glance, this 1927 map watch is pretty nifty: an antediluvian GPS, don't you know. It was called the Plus Four Wristlet Route Indicator, a name so clunky, unmemorable and artless that it even sounds like the name of a modern GPS device. The idea was simple: the Wooster-esque motorist would putter around England, scrolling a tiny paper map loaded in his wrist as he went with two black knobs. If you took a turn, you simple slid out one map and inserted another one and continued on your way.
What ho! Ingenious! Except a complete road map only cost a few pence back in 1927, where as this device would have set you back around 5 quid. And just like modern GPS map providers, the real business model was in selling you additional maps.
Which leaves the design. I quite like it: it's cheap, but whimsical and adventurous, like something you might strap on your wrist to traverse Oz.
乍看之下，這1927年的地圖手表是相當漂亮的：
它的名字是Plus Four Wristlet Route Indicator（路線指標手表）。
你只要轉動兩個黑色的旋鈕，地圖就會轉換。很酷吧？
現代的（GPS）全球定位系统的想法，應該由此而來的吧？
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