Throwback Tech: Self-driving cars were a thing, in the 1950s

In the 1950s, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) believed it had the self-driving car buckled up and locked down. The company’s quarterly magazine, Electronic Age , featured its vision of the “highway of the future” in its January 1958 issue. The article read:

“You reach over to your dashboard and push the button marked ‘Electronic Drive.’ Selecting your lane, you settle back to enjoy the ride as your car adjusts itself to the prescribed speed. You may prefer to read or carry on a conversation with your passengers — or even to catch up on your office work. It makes no difference for the next several hundred miles as far as the driving is concerned. Fantastic? Not at all. The first long step toward this automatic highway of the future was successfully illustrated by RCA and the State of Nebraska on October 10, 1957, on a 400-foot strip of public highway on the outskirts of Lincoln.”

About two and a half years later, reporters experienced the highway themselves on a test track located in Princeton, NJ. The cars drove themselves around the track, using sensors on their front bumpers to detect an electrical cable embedded in the road. The cable was equipped with signals warning of obstructions ahead, such as a stalled vehicle or road work, and the cars would autonomously brake or switch lanes, depending on what was up the road. A receiver on the dashboard would also interrupt the vehicle’s radio to announce information about upcoming exits.

Image source: The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images.

The image above shows an experimental autonomous car from General Motors, which had its steering wheel and pedals replaced with a small joystick and an emergency brake. On the dashboard, meters displayed the car’s speed along with the distance to the car in front of it.

RCA engineer Vladimir Zworykin designed the system. In a 1975 interview, he explained his inspiration for the highway of the future.

“This growing number of automobiles and people killed in accidents meant something should be done,” Zworykin said. “My idea was that control of automobiles should be done by the road.”

According to the RCA vision, it would take a decade or two until all highway driving was autonomous, with human drivers taking over when their exits approached.

It’s been more than a century now, and we’re just starting to get comfortable with autonomous vehicles on highways. And yet, the issue of reliably transitioning between autonomous and human control hasn’t been completely solved.

Perhaps we need another decade or two to comfortably cruise into the future.