There so much cool design and neat ideas that really were just ahead of their time to be found in the past.
My suspicion is that nearly everything people are breathlessly running to the patent office with these days thinking they've got something new, someone has already tried to pull off with gears and little bits of paper 100 years ago.
"The glass window, an improvement on the original device as far as I can tell, stops the paper getting wet in the rain when you are driving your convertible sports car with the top down."
When Britain still was an empire, they didn't just complain endlessly about the weather. A little rain didn't deter anyone from cruising around in their Morgan...
Absolutely, when I had my Fiat, I drove all year round and almost never with the top up. Winter is so much fun with sun and warm heater on your face. A thick hat and blanket keeps it cozy.
This would be an excellent application for a Pebble e-ink watch. I would kill for something like this for motorcycle trips. The usual Google Maps on cellphone navigation isn't very useful, but having a small device strapped outside my jacket wrist with simple a nice big glove-usable button would be great.
Pilots now have iPads strapped to their legs. Or, that's what a friend of mine does. It really useful (with a dedicated pilot app, not Google Maps), but they always have a "real" GPS onboard for backup.
That is a cool gizmo. Lots of interesting linear steps kinds of things you might do with it, like cooking for example, each step of the process scroll up to the next step.
