The Complete History of the GPS System
August 20, 2010 by GPS Answers
Filed under car gps
GPS, or Global Positioning System has been around more years than most people even understand. The common man thinks that GPS is a relatively new technology that just helps to get from one place to another. While this is a great new way to travel and it makes it much easier to find places, this technology has been used much longer than the past two decades. In fact, this type of satellite system has actually been in place in theory for nearly a half a century.
The American government found that when Sputnik was launched that it was easy to find it when the signal was tracked by the radio waves that were emitted. In the sixties, the US Navy sent six satellites up into to space that allowed naval submarines to know exactly where they were at when submerged. The actual first GPS system was launched by the Department of Defense in 1978. So from the sixties to the seventies, a good of research was done on this type of positioning system. This is a full twenty years before the systems were used for civilian purposes.
As time went on, and technology advanced, more the government sent up more satellites and the older satellites were disabled or fell to the earth. Today, there are twenty four satellites orbiting the earth that are solely dedicated to the Global Positioning System that we all know and love today. While the military still uses these GPS satellites for military purposes by encrypting signals, the rest of the population can make use of the open signals to know where they are and how to get where they want to go.
No longer can the ladies badger the men for not stopping for directions. Now, the information can simply be input into a GPS tracking system with mapping capabilities and everyone is going to know exactly where they are and what direction their destination is located at. A good deal of today’s units even come with a voice who is going to tell you when you need to turn right or left or continue on straight.
They have become the co-pilots in the cockpit of the car. Eventually, in the future, they may even take the place of the driver and become the auto pilots of the car. As fast as the technology moves, it can be just around the corner when this technology could actually be in place. The GPS system is making its mark by being used by many manufacturers as they are going to be making them a part of the vehicles that they produce.
