Believe it or not, the first self-driving car was built in 1986. I'm Adam from Ripley's.com, and this is your Weird Minute. Self-driving technology seems to be edging closer, a marvel of modern technology. but Carnegie Mellon actually produced an autonomous car before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Research for what was dubbed Navlab 1 began in 1984, and Alvin, the autonomous land vehicle in a neural network,
hit the streets a few years later. The self-driving van had about one tenth of the processing power of an Apple Watch, but was still able to navigate roads at 70 miles per hour. The car had no connection to the internet, and made all of its decisions itself. This was long before Google Maps. Alvin was equipped with cameras and radar, while also carrying a 5000W generator
and extra air conditioning units to keep its refrigerator-sized CPU cool. News reporters were just as in awe of the project as they are with modern autonomous vehicles, and the US military dumped eight years of funding into the project. Alvin never made its way into people's garages, but it toured as a technological oddity until the late 1990s. For more strange stories, visit ripleys.com, rate The Weird Minute if you haven't already, and tune in tomorrow for another Minutes of Odd.