Before Silicon Valley test drove its first prototypes, Ernst Dickmanns put a self-driving car on the road in the 1980s. SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The race to develop driverless cars long predates Silicon Valley and the high-profile tech companies that dominate the industry today. Decades before autonomous vehicles competed in high-speed desert challenges, a small group of engineers in Germany and the United States were quietly building the foundations of self-driving technology. A DRIVERLESS TOMORROW: Explore the triumphs, setbacks and innovations shaping the driverless future Many credit figures, such as Karl Benz, Henry Ford, and Enzo Ferrari, have shaped the modern automobile. But when it comes to self-driving vehicles, a different set of names emerges, including Ernst Dickmanns, Red Whittaker, Sebastian Thrun, Chris Urmson and Anthony Levandowski. Several of these innovators first gained widespread attention during the DARPA Grand Challenges, a series of autonomous-vehicle races launched by the U.S. Department of Defense in 2004 to accelerate progress in self-driving technology. Years before those competitions, however, Dickmanns and his team were already testing autonomous vehicles on public roads. "I'm Ernst Dickmanns, and I was the first who put a self-driving car on the road in the early 1980s," he said. Now nearly 90, Dickmanns lives in a small town near Munich, far from the technology centers of the United States. He rarely speaks publicly about his work, but his contributions helped shape how autonomous vehicles "see" the world. Dickmanns pioneered dynamic computer vision, the technology that allows machines to interpret moving images in real time. In the 1960s and 1970s, he worked with the German Aerospace Research Establishment, analyzing rocket trajectories, applying image-processing techniques at a time when computer power was severely limited. "Well, in Oberpfaffenhofen, I've been the acting director of the Centre in 1974/75," Dickmanns said, describing his early