Jump LinksThe First Ford With A Moylan Arrow Was The EscortCadillac Invented The Modern Trip ComputerJames Moylan Took A Lot Of Pride In His InventionWhen you think of the best inventions in modern cars, what comes to mind? Back-up cameras are a good one. Modern ECUs help to make cars safer and more efficient. Hybrid technology has come a long way since the first Toyota Prius, and who doesn't like adjustable magnetic suspension? All marvels of modern engineering, but the invention we've got in mind is far simpler.We're here today to talk about the Moylan Arrow, named for its recently departed inventor, James Moylan, and which we won't hesitate to name as one of our favorite inventions of the last 40 years. You have no doubt used the arrow countless times without knowing what it was called. It's that little arrow on your gas gauge that tells you which side of the car the fuel door is located on. That's really all it is. It might be illuminated or simply painted right onto the plastic, but it's just an arrow telling you where to look. Here's why we can't drive without it. The Invention Of The Moylan Arrow Bring a Trailer Necessity is the mother of invention, and, as the story goes, James Moylan was driving in the rain, one dreary April day in 1986, when he had to pull into a gas station to refuel. He wasn't yet familiar with the Ford fleet car he was driving, and pulled up to the pump on the wrong side. He stepped out of the car, got soaked to the bone by the rain, and saw that the fuel door was nowhere to be found. So he had to climb back into the car to turn it around and line the fuel door up with the pump.Moylan wasted no time coming up with a solution to the problem. That very same day, Moylan drafted up what the folks at Ford called a "product convenience suggestion" for a way to indicate, somewhere in the instrument cluster, on which side the fuel door is located.The proposal included a sketch that showed an open fuel door, and the argument that "Even if all Ford product lines eventually locate on the same side, for the minor investment involved on the company's part, I think it would be a worthwhile convenience not only for two-car families, but also pool car users and especially car rental customers." The First Ford With A Moylan Arrow Was The Escort Bring a Trailer Inspiration came quickly to Moylan, and after some time, the higher ups in the company got back to him, but, when they did, it was all good news. Ford's interior design director, R Zokas, liked the idea, and informed Moylan that they would be moving ahead with the plan, debuting the new indicators on the 1989 Ford Escort and Mercury Tracer.The idea was a simple one, requiring no extensive engineering or focus testing. Nobody had to reprogram the ECU for this one, or spend billions on R&D to come up with some new space age polymers. All they had to do was add a little arrow to the fuel gauge, usually featuring a little icon of a gas pump, or even some text reading "fuel door," just to make sure there's no confusion, and they had something to make everyone's life a little easier. Who Was James Moylan? Bring a Trailer According to most reports on Moylan's passing, he's only been referred to as "a Ford employee," or simply "the inventor of the Moylan Arrow," with or without mention of his role in the company.Well, according to Ford Authority, he worked about as far away from the interior design team as you could get, having been employed by Ford as a draftsman in the body engineering department all the way back in 1968. Moylan was hit with a brief layoff in the 1970s, and came back to Team Ford in the plastics engineering department.Moylan spent some time in the 1980s stationed in Hiroshima, Japan, as part of Ford's partnership with Mazda, and eventually retired in 2003.As Moylan puts it, "I got back to my office after the meeting, and without even taking my coat off, I sat down and started writing the first draft of this proposal... I typed it up and turned it in and forgot completely about it." So imagine, Moylan was sitting in his office, soaking wet, and pitching an idea to people in completely different departments than the one in which he worked.If there's a moral to the story, it may simply be that a good idea is always worth sending up the flagpole, no matter your position or department at work. A Brief History Of The Fuel Gauge Kia When we say that this is a brief history of the fuel gauge, we mean it. There's not that much to the fuel gauge. It's a gauge that tells you how much fuel you have in the tank.The first production vehicle with a dash-mounted fuel gauge as a standard feature was the 1914 Studebaker. Before the Studebaker introduced the idea of looking at your dash to find out how much gas you had left, drivers would use dipsticks, or you could pop the cap, peek inside, and eyeball it. Shell even sold branded dipsticks for checking your fuel levels.From there, you can pretty much fast-forward all the way to the invention of the Moylan Arrow to find the next meaningful development in the modern fuel gauge. Sensors became more sensitive, and you have digital as well as analog displays, but the fuel gauge was, conceptually, a perfect idea right from the start. It didn't need improving in bits-and-pieces like, say, airbags, or in-cabin entertainment. It was a simple idea, and automakers got it right, right away. Cadillac Invented The Modern Trip Computer Modern trip computers, with their mileage estimators and miles-to-empty indicators, could be considered a development in the modern fuel gauge. It's difficult to say which make and model "invented" the miles-to-empty indicator, though. But we can say that the first car with an electronic trip computer was the Tripmaster found in the 1978 Cadillac Seville Elegante, which was such a novel idea at the time that Cadillac had to enlist golf legend Arnold Palmer to help explain to the public how it worked back in the day.Semantically speaking, the first in-car mileage estimator might have been a brainy kid in the backseat with a notepad and a pocket calculator, asking you how many gallons you pumped at the last stop. If that doesn't count, you could say that the Tripmaster set the foundation for the more sophisticated fuel information systems that would follow. James Moylan Took A Lot Of Pride In His Invention Some engineers and designers in the automotive world have a list of credits as long as your arm. For instance, you look at what Italdesign did in the 1980s and 1990s, and it seems like the list of cars Giorgetto Giugiaro didn't have a hand in would be shorter than the list of cars to which he contributed. To be remembered for just one thing, though, can be just as important an achievement, and, according to Moylan's obituary, he was more than happy with the legacy he left behind.The vast majority of people who work at Ford or Mazda or Toyota, or any other automaker, will be lucky to ever have one of their ideas reach implementation. We've covered countless concept cars that never saw the road. So, to have your name attached to one of the most helpful little conveniences of the last half-century, that's something to hang your hat on. So here's to you, James Moylan. Your crappy day in the rain has saved a lot of us from getting soaked ourselves.