If you are over 40, you might remember back when talking to your car was only done to coax it to start or make it to the next service station or when it failed to do either one. Gadgets were limited to a radio with AM/FM and a cigarette liter.
Now days you can give your car voice commands and it can give you a host of information, like my Drivers Information Center (DIC) which runs my C7 Corvette. We can even control the environment on different sides of the car from temperature on down to how much air blows out of your vented seats.
But that wasn’t always the case. If you are way over 30 you might recall the only way to adjust the temperature was to open your vent window.
Recently I was at a car show and if you’re a regular reader you might recall that I love dash boards, especially those that are painted and chromed, I saw a curious feature on a Rambler dashboard(I don’t recall the year). It was labeled “Weather Eye”.
So a little research was in order.
As you may know Nash was an auto maker and through a series of mergers or purchases changed it name to Nash Kalvinater, eventually became American Motors Corporation (AMC). Well they were the first to develop a car heater. Back in 1938 engineers got the idea to run fresh air over the hot engine water and pass it into the cabin. The air came in through the vent in the cowl and passed the air through a heater core filled with hot coolant. Later on they figured out how to keep the warm are in and the cold are out, by adding a fan to keep constant pressure in the cabin.
A year later Nash engineers added a thermostat for the first climate control, dubbed the “The Weather Eye”. Here are some pics:
This was the dash that caught my eye.
Here is an image from the web that shows a better image of the “Weather Eye”
Here is an image show the “Weather Eye’s” controls
Thanks for reading.
Tim
well tim, you might want to do some more research and homework. mr. thomas ahearn, invented the first electric car heater in 1890. cars in the 1920’s started having car heaters using the engine coolant as the source of heat. but for many decades, people thought that the 1954 nash was first in having all up front air conditioning, but i proved beyond any doubt, that it was actually the 1954 pontiac that had the up front, in dash factory air conditioning first, pontiac in december of 1953, nash in may of 1954. tim, tell me what you think. charles coker, 1953 pontiac technical advisor. pontiac oakland club international.
Thanks Charles. I omitted the “Fresh Air” as in – hot water using fresh air. Thanks for straightening that out and for taking the time to drop me a note.
A couple references:
Nerad, Jack; Redgap, Curtis. “Nash Motors cars, 1916 to 1954”. allpar.com. Retrieved 16 June 2013.
Heppenheimer, Thomas A. (Spring 2005). “Cold Comfort”. Invention & Technology Magazine 20 (4). Archived from the original on 1 January 2010. Retrieved 16 June 2013.
Is that pushbutton automatic I see in your picture? I thought only Mother Mopar used pushbutton auto.
I know AMC used MOPAR auto transmissions; the Torque Flite was renamed Power Flite when installed in a AMC.
Even Edsels had push button for the transmission – in the steering wheel. Not everything was invented by Chrysler, ya know!!!! 🙂
Actually, it was named Torque Command
Thanks for the note Rob. That was the name for the Rambler or the AMC transmission. I believe.