From speedometers to modern instrument clusters

SAE 100 Future look: Modern driver information has come a long way since then, encompassing a whole history of automobile instrumentation that would be unimaginable without Schulze's speedometer and its technological successors.

On October 7, 1902, engineer Otto Schulze received a patent for an eddy-current speedometer.

The first automobiles had no “cockpit” as such. And there was simply no need for instruments. Even in motor racing events staged in France around 1895, the maximum speed was roughly 30 km/h (18 mph).