Really?
I mean, I bow to your nerd knowledge, but are you sure that autolanding was not added later or something?
I just vividly remember the first landing shuttles being escorted by a pair of fighters reading altitude figures aloud (presumably to help their colleague at the helm inside the shuttle) - ending with a TOUCHDOWN. IIRC in the tv footage we would only hear the voices of the pilots of the escorting jets. And the stories about how this is exceptionally tough for the pilot, because A) unlike the usual aircrafts the shuttle has no reserve throttle power to be used, if something goes wrong, B) the speed of a landing shuttle is something like 350 km/h (over 200 mph), way faster than, say, jet liners need (I guess the shuttle would stall if it attempted to land with an air speed of 200 km/h or thereabouts).
Of course, my memory may be affected by the fact that one the first computer games (for one of those beauties with 16 kB RAM) that a high school class mate coded was to bring a landing shuttle down.
Oh God! And now shuttles are considered outdated... But, but they are the new thing ...