Posted on 07/04/2016 7:31:35 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
On the way to Desert Storm, U.S. troops stopped in California in order to buy consumer GPS units at local stores.... Mr. Milner is a brisk and funny guide to the bureaucratic and technological infighting in the U.S. military, which created GPS over the course of several decades beginning in the immediate aftermath of the 1957 launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite. GPS predecessors included Transit, built by the U.S. Navy to track its nuclear submarines, and Timation, built by a different part of the Navy. A rival Air Force program called 621B was underfunded, Mr. Milner says, because many in the Air Force believed that “the problem of navigation seemed largely solved.” The Air Force bureaucracy was unable to digest just how transformative greater precision would be...., a driver using a GPS jammer to block his employer’s fleet-tracking system accidentally blocked signals meant to guide airplanes approaching Newark Airport....
GPS can specify position precisely, but in relation to what? In a “maddening paradox,” GPS, at its most precise, depends on an accurate model of the shape of the Earth, which in turn depends on GPS
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Somewhere out there is a Freeper, whose father was an engineer, deep in the beginnings of GPS.
He did post about it.
My source links are not working - try later.
I remember before GPS we used maps - they were amazing!
That’s me. The website for my book is www.gpsdeclassified.com
DUMBGRUNT wrote: “My climbing partner of many years could bushwhack for days and get us there, no gps, dead reckoning.”
I call that ‘navigating by sense of smell’.
I know of company commanders that will order their troops to leave their GPS back on post every so often to ensure they can navigate without GPS.
There are times when you just have to ignore the GPS. It won’t always take you were you want to go or by the way you desire.
Thank you for validating my memory!
Most anyone can get by with a 7.5 topo and maybe a compass!
More fun to risk it on the batteries in your phone/GPS.
We purchased a handheld GPS for our USMC Infantry son before his first run in the sandbox.
Later they issued him one,same model, he used his for all three trips.
Somewhere along the line his guys updated it.
I was interviewed for Milner’s book. But I think my book is better. :)
When we talk about the the effects of GPS on both society and the individual, I am reminded of the many changes that technology has wrought prior to GPS. One that I recall, from a long-time back TV documentary, talked about how late Middle Ages scholars would train their memories for fact retention. They would create a mental house with rooms and tie the fact to a given room. The development of paper over vellum and the printing press gave a tech alternative to that laborious ability.
There are many other such tech over-rides and obviously more so in recent history. Slide rules, which replaced earlier devices and training, have completely lost out to calculators and computers. Yet, there are those amongst us who still keep those skills somewhat greased, if only for our own pleasure.
Still, when I look at our cell phone and GPS world, while I may feel a pang for lost abilities, I will still make max use of the new ones. The ability to see what fuel prices are when your gauge reads very low and then to navigate to the cheapest is a comfort when I am traveling in strange country.
Long ago I used a slide rule for extraction of roots.
When the calculators became cheap, I moved on.
Years later I had a trainee preparing for an exam, someone said he needed to know how to do longhand root extraction.
I vaguely recalled a trial divisor, and some interpolation???
It made my brain hurt!!!
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