Continuing with control and indicating function I’ll suggest pipe organs as an at least very early and potentially complicated control panel. The rank of pipes is added to the set of speaking pipes with stops. Early organs had no power assistance on the stops and quite substantial levers would emanate from the organ around the keyboard to be slid back and forth or in and out to control the sound, with the position of the levers clearly indicating the current registration of the organ. This design seems to have developed about 1450 and was retrofitted to older organs over the centuries.
I agree, by that sense the AM isn’t one. I didn’t suggest it in reference to controlling other things or indicating external information, but rather the OP’s criterion of “glancing at a set spot in our visual field to learn an item of information” - the idea of a set of various dials that had changeable information in a set layout.
With the evolving sense of what was actually asked, I agree it doesn’t qualify.
So the question is really about what is nowadays often called a ‘dashboard’? In data analysis this is often used as a means to see at a glance how various indicators are doing.
The steam gauges mentioned above from the 1800s seem a good example, as the OP seems to imply an automated process of driving the indicators in real-time, not manually (which would be bookkeeping).
An interesting and relevant article published just yesterday: