MUSEUM OF THE FALLEN
Dominance is not eternal.
The Wall/ Lost Technology/ The Portable GPS Unit
A Garmin eTrex H handheld GPS navigation unit, a compact yellow-and-grey portable device.

Tim, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0

Lost Technology

The Portable GPS Unit

2004 CE 2015 CE

The suction-cupped dashboard guide that said 'recalculating' until the smartphone gave directions for free.

Born
2004 CE
Died
2015 CE
Lived
11 years
Dead for
11 yrs
At its peak
Garmin and TomTom shipped tens of millions of units a year in the late 2000s
Cause of death
Replaced
Replaced by
Smartphone navigation (Google Maps, Waze, Apple Maps)
The Obituary

The portable navigation device, sold mainly by Garmin and TomTom, briefly owned the car dashboard. From around 2004 these suction-cupped screens used GPS satellites and stored maps to give turn-by-turn voice directions, and “recalculating” after a wrong turn became a familiar refrain. Sales ran to tens of millions a year by the late 2000s. Then smartphones added free mapping apps with live traffic and constant updates, and the standalone unit had no advantage left. PND sales fell sharply through the 2010s, surviving mostly in trucking and outdoor handhelds.

Worth remembering

  • A synthesized voice and a suction-cup windshield mount became standard road-trip equipment.
  • 'Recalculating' after a missed turn became a small, weary cultural catchphrase.

Sources

  1. Portable navigation devices from Garmin and TomTom boomed in the mid-2000s Wikipedia
  2. Smartphone mapping apps caused a steep decline in standalone PND sales Wikipedia

A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.

Buried nearby
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Bethlehem Steel
1857 CE — 2003 CE
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Blockbuster
1985 CE — 2010 CE
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Atari, Inc.
1972 CE — 1984 CE
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