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"Cyberspace is a metaphor that allows us to grasp this place where since about the time of the second world war we've increasingly done so many of the things that we think of as civilization."
- William Gibson

Talking Speedometer  
  A gauge that tells you its value verbally  

This is an early use of the idea of a gauge that does not need you to look at it to get a "reading."

He pressed the accelerator under his finger, and as he passed the 150-k.p.h. mark the speedometer's mechanical whisper cut in- "One sixty- One sixty-eight- One eighty-"
Technovelgy from Biddiver, by Theodore Sturgeon.
Published by Astounding Science-Fiction in 1941
Additional resources -

Sturgeon couldn't resist adding another example:

He went quite peacefully to sleep then, ignoring the new whispering voice that joined that of the speedometer:

"Four hundred twelve k.p.h.-"

"Altitude twenty-three thousand fifty-"

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Biddiver
  More Ideas and Technology by Theodore Sturgeon
  Tech news articles related to Biddiver
  Tech news articles related to works by Theodore Sturgeon

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