Electronic Cruise Control
Daniel Aaron Wisner invented Automotive Electronic Cruise Control in 1968 as an engineer for RCA's Industrial and Automation Systems Division in Plymouth, Michigan. His invention described in two patents filed that year (#3570622 & #3511329), with the second modifying his original design by debuting digital memory, was the first electronic gadgetry to play a role in controlling a car and ushered in the computer-controlled era in the automobile industry. Two decades lapsed before an integrated circuit for his design was developed by Motorola Inc. as the MC14460 Auto Speed Control Processor in CMOS. As a result, cruise control was eventually adopted by automobile manufacturers as standard equipment and nearly every car built and many trucks are fitted with a configuration of the circuitry and hardware nearly identical to his prototype. The advantage of electronic speed control over its mechanical predecessor, which was featured on luxury models but never gained wide acceptance, was that it could be easily integrated with electronic accident avoidance and engine management systems.
Read more about this topic: Cruise Control
Famous quotes containing the words electronic, cruise and/or control:
“The war was won on both sides: by the Vietnamese on the ground, by the Americans in the electronic mental space. And if the one side won an ideological and political victory, the other made Apocalypse Now and that has gone right around the world.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Life begins to happen.
My hoppped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“If someone does something we disapprove of, we regard him as bad if we believe we can deter him from persisting in his conduct, but we regard him as mad if we believe we cannot. In either case, the crucial issue is our control of the other: the more we lose control over him, and the more he assumes control over himself, the more, in case of conflict, we are likely to consider him mad rather than just bad.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)