Speedometer

A speedometer or speed meter is a gauge that measures and displays the instantaneous speed of a vehicle. Now universally fitted to motor vehicles, they started to be available as options in the early 20th century, and as standard equipment from about 1910 onwards.[1] Other vehicles may use devices analogous to the speedometer with different means of sensing speed, eg. boats use a pit log, while aircraft use an airspeed indicator.

An animation of an electronic Aston Martin speedometer's self-test routine, showing how an analogue speedometer hand may indicate the vehicle's speed
A Ford speedometer, showing both mph (outer) and km/h (inner), as well as an odometer in miles
A modern speedometer in a Toyota Corolla
A digital, LCD speedometer in a Honda Insight

Charles Babbage is credited with creating an early type of a speedometer, which was usually fitted to locomotives.[2]

The electric speedometer was invented by the Croatian Josip Belušić[3] in 1888 and was originally called a velocimeter.


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This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Speedometer, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.