Etak (automotive navigation systems)

Etak, Inc. was an independent US-based vendor of automotive navigation system equipment, digital maps, and mapping software. It was founded in 1983.

Its original headquarters were in Sunnyvale, but the company later moved to 1430 O'Brien Drive (View on OpenStreetMap) in Menlo Park, California. The company finally ceased to exist under the name "Etak" shortly after its acquisition by Tele Atlas in 2000. In its time, it was a pioneer in commercializing automotive navigation systems and digital mapping, technologies that have since entered the mainstream.

Etak's initial start-up funding came from Nolan Bushnell, famous for starting Atari and Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theater.

"[Co-founder Stan Honey] was doing military-related research at SRI International in 1983 when he sailed with Pong inventor and Atari founder Nolan Bushnell to victory in a Transpac race. Bushnell was impressed with Honey's navigational electronics and asked whether he had any other ideas. Honey suggested a car navigation system. Bushnell gave him $500,000 in seed money, and digital-mapping firm Etak (named after a Polynesian term for navigation) was born."

Etak's Navigator was the first commercially available automotive navigation system of any practical significance. Etak initially delivered the hardware system, the maps and dynamic content for its automotive navigation system.

Early Etak product literature claimed that "Etak" was an ancient Polynesian term that described navigating intuitively by the stars.

Etak's initial product, the Navigator, was introduced in 1985. This system was the precursor to today's GPS-based automotive navigation systems, many of which trace a direct line of descent to Etak's technology.

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