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"I went back to science fiction to try a few experiments …and my first experiment was a disaster…"
- Alfred Bester

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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