Did You Ever Wonder How The Global Positioning System Was Developed

Ever since man first started to roam the earth he has been trying to find ways to navigate his way. Throughout time man has made many improvements in the way he navigates his way around the world, and even door to door. Sailors used to use the sun and the stars to navigate by. The biggest problem with that, is that they would have several days of cloudy weather and not be able to take sightings of the sun or the stars.

How man began to find his way From the cave man to present day, man has always been in search of ways to navigate his way. The cave man used to use sticks, stones and other methods to mark the path they had taken, so that others may follow or that they could find their way back. As time went on and man evolved, hieroglyphics were used to describe the route to take. That still did not solve the problem of navigating to a new destination. Man eventually invented the Sexton that relied up being able to take a sighting from the stars or the sun. This was a brilliant idea, there was only one problem that was insurmountable. The weather, when it became cloudy for several days a sighting from the stars or sun became impossible to take. When this would happen, man would just have to do what they called Dead Reckoning, which in essence means that it was their best guess. This meant that whether they were walking or sailing, that when they were able to get a celestial sighting that they would end up having to make course corrections, which added miles and time to their trip.

The Beginning of Radio Navigation

The origins of radio navigation started in the 1920's. During the early part of WWII a two dimensional ( latitude and longitude ) radio navigation system was developed by MIT Radiation Laboratory that was known as LORAN. It used time - difference -of arrival of radio signals and was the first real all weather position finding system. In 1959 the US Military launched the first satellite-based system known as TRANSIT and was meant to support US Navy submarine fleet. The TRANSIT system used seven low orbiting satellites in polar orbits. In 1967 TRANSIT was opened up for the use in civilian application. It proved very useful for slow-moving platforms such as ships but was to slow for faster moving platforms such as airplanes. Although it could not be used by faster moving platforms, it started to lay the ground work for the 3 - dimensional systems (latitude, longitude, altitude ) that are in use today known as GPS or Global Positioning System.

The Global Positioning System has evolved in may ways into today's GPS. There are many uses for GPS whether your driving and needing directions, on a job site as a surveyor or contractor, in the backwoods hunting, fishing, hiking, biking, site seeing or camping, your sure to find a GPS system to fit all of your needs no matter what they might be. There is no need to ever be lost again with today's technology.

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Gary Lowry