History
Speed control with a centrifugal governor was used in automobiles as early as the 1910s, notably by Peerless. Peerless advertised that their system would "maintain speed whether up hill or down". The technology was invented by James Watt and Matthew Boulton in 1788 to control steam engines. The governor adjusts the throttle position as the speed of the engine changes with different loads.
Modern cruise control (also known as a speedostat) was invented in 1945 by the inventor and mechanical engineer Ralph Teetor. His idea was born out of the frustration of riding in a car driven by his lawyer, who kept speeding up and slowing down as he talked. The first car with Teetor's system was the 1958 Imperial (called "Auto-pilot") This system calculated ground speed based on driveshaft rotations and used a solenoid to vary throttle position as needed.
A 1955 U.S. Patent for a "Constant Speed Regulator" was filed in 1950 by M-Sgt Frank J. Riley. He installed his invention, which he conceived while driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, on his own car in 1948. Despite this patent, the inventor, Riley, and the subsequent patent holders were not able to collect royalties for any of the inventions using cruise control.
Following the 1973 oil crisis and rising fuel prices, the device became more popular in the U.S. "Cruise control can save gas by avoiding surges that expel fuel" while driving at steady speeds. In 1974, AMC, GM, and Chrysler priced the option at $60 to $70, while Ford charged $103.
Read more about this topic: Cruise Control
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)