From your link:

The first car with Teetor's system was the 1958 Imperial (called "Auto-pilot") using a speed dial on the dashboard.

More details here:

http://www.imperialclub.com/Yr/1958/58AutoPilot/index.htm

http://www.imperialclub.com/Articles/58AutoPilot/index.htm

How ironic. I wonder how many drivers using that system crashed, thinking it would do everything for them...

From looking at the photos on the latter article, I'm guessing zero people crashed expected it to do everything for them. The UI is a knob on which you set the speed you want.

The state of the art in computers at the time was the RAMAC 305, a vacuum tube computer which featured IBM's first disc drive. The computer itself was meant to be installed in a room 30'x50'. The disk drive itself was 4' across, weighed about a ton, and held 5 million characters (6 bits each). All this could be yours for only $300k/year (in current dollars).

Given that, and given that the transistor radio was introduced only a few years before, I doubt anybody expected the sort of magic we see as commonplace today. And if they did, they would let go of the wheel and find out in about 2 seconds that it was not staying on course.

Confusion over the function of cruise control was the subject of a long series of urban legends. I remember hearing at least one of these when I was growing up in the 90s. Ironically, the lesson of many of these stories is that the name for a fully self-driving system is "autopilot" not "cruise control".

> [1995] This guy saves up his money and finally gets the van he always wanted. Fridge and tv in the back, all the works. He starts driving out on a country road that leads to his home. He sets the van on cruise control and gets out of the drivers seat and goes into the back to get a beer. The van of course goes off the road, and when the paramedics ask him what happened, he said he thought he had auto-pilot.

> [1993] An old china man was driving along in his motor home. He turned on his ‘cruise control’. Apparently misunderstanding the function of ‘cruise control’, he then went into the back of the motor home. The motor home drove off the road and crashed. Apparently he did not realize that ‘cruise control’ is not ‘autopilot.’

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cruise-uncontrol/

And don't forget this famous example:

> [1996] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ToNp1MY3c&t=33s

Likely did contribute to some accidents. Even simple cruise control can catch you out if you're not really paying attention -- e.g. when coming up on slower traffic.

But nobody in 1958 would have the slightest expectation that the car would actually drive itself. Tesla has been using the terms "self driving" and "autopilot" together since they started markting the car.

This is a good example of a case where engineering from first principles, especially around user experience for driving, can lead to making the same mistakes again (e.g., autopilot naming, and potentially issues related to consistent braking performance found in the Consumer Reports review.)