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The Federalist Botches the GPS Story or, Say it Ain’t So, Mollie
Brad Parkinson has claimed for the past 40 years that he and 12 other people invented GPS at the Lonely Halls Meeting at the Pentagon over Labor Day 1973. This week, an article in The Federalist and a video by Scott Manley accepted this story. But is it true?
GPS developed out of my father, Timation Navsat, and the Air Force’s Project 621B. Phil Klass in the 20 August 1973 issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology described the two systems.
Navy favors the use of medium-altitude satellites, at 8,000 mile altitude, probably in polar orbit. A total of 27 satellites would be needed to provide continuous global coverage.
Air Force favors a combination of satellite4s in geosynchronous and near-geosynchronous orbit, with five satellites in each regional constellation. Four such constellation would be required for full global coverage, involving a total of 20 spacecraft.
The Navy Navsat technique, which it calls Timation, would outfit each satellite with a precise crystal oscillator, and each spacecraft would operate autonomously except for the periodic updating of the satellite clock and its transmitted ephemeris data, using several ground stations around the globe (AW&ST Nov 27, 1967, p. 73). If the satellites were equipped with an atomic clock, fewer stations would be needed. The USAF approach is to use each navsat simply as a repeater for signals originating at a central ground facility for each regional constellation deployed.
The earliest relevant document I’ve found after Labor Day 1973 is dated 21 September 1973. It references a 4 September document which I haven’t been able to locate; by itself, it contradicts Parkinson’s story that GPS was invented at Lonely Halls.
This addendum describes an additional alternative for a Defense Navigation Satellite Development Plan (DNSDP). A description of the technical aspects of Alternative IV and a comparison of this alternative with the three discussed in the 4 September 1973 Development Concept Paper are presented….
Accurate clocks are required earlier in Alternative IV since the satellites are autonomous, processing satellites rather than the relay satellites of the first three alternatives.
Alternative IV more closely resembles Timation and GPS, and it emerged after 4 September. Phil Klass in the 26 November 1973 issue of AW&ST wrote:
The ability of the USAF and Navy to resolve their long-standing differences over the orbital configuration by adopting basically the Navy-proposed constellation arrangement has eliminated one of the major obstacles to Pentagon approval for the program.
The interested reader can find additional information in my book GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones and in the following articles: Inside GNSS, The Space Review 1 and The Space Review 2.
Published in Science & Technology
Perhaps @MollieHemingway could help correct the record?
Will you be able to contact the authors of the article, or better yet, the “Federalist” editors who published the article?
Perhaps you can take a tiny bit of solace in the fact that they did not give credit to Al Gore, for inventing both the internet and GPS.
And the relevant Sept 4th 1973 article that you have not located, may I suggest that if if you want I could research and perhaps find it. But I’d need the info you have available.
I sent an email to the Federalist asking if I could write a response. I copied Mollie on my Tweets but she has 1.1M followers and it was Labor Day weekend so I doubt if she’s seen my replies.
You should go to Scott Manley and his Youtube and tell him as well
I commented about it. I’m sure that they all love me. 😀
Oh bazz fazz. I was afraid of that. I marked that story to read later, but I suspected it would be the party line rather than the real deal.
Obligatory book plug for anyone here who wants a freebie: just PM me.
The author of the article did research, found a group of people employed by the military who are cited as being the “inventors” of GPS.
However Roger Easton is mentioned in the article and given credit for the fact that satellites were put in orbit to aid the ability of the developing GPS system.
So it could be because the military team perhaps wrongly cited as being the inventors of the system were actually “only” the inventors of necessary components bringing the GPS invention up to speed such that it was actually useful for first the military and then by some 4 decades later, much of the public.
I am not familiar enough with how to make a distinction. It does seem that your father’s overall concept and idea would accredit him for its invention.
But without the work done in specifying, designing and overseeing all the components needed to bring the idea up to speed, GPS would have not be usable.
I had a friend who “only” did signalling needed to make the USB device work. He didn’t come up with the idea, but made it feasible. The other people in the team gave him credit as one of the inventors of the USB. Of course they all worked for the same company so the company culture saw to that.
In your dad’s case, once the military men ran with the idea, he was out of the loop.
The author of the “Federalist” piece is someone who has to write a lot of articles and also do something other than write in order to have nice house, school for the kids and other things needed for a normal lifestyle.
He did a lot of research handling complex scientific ideas rather than the usual political writing involving less complex bodies of knowledge. Writers take the low lying fruit, and don’t work that hard to make sure the research that they noticed easily is indeed the right stuff.
Hi Carol,
Please note that my father was not out of the loop. NRL played a major role in developing the atomic clocks which are critical to making GPS work. There were many other errors in the article but I wanted to focus on the critical one. For example, he wrote:
APL had a plan to follow-up Transit with another LEO Navsat. 621B, as referenced in the August AW&ST article, had a plan for GEO and near GEO satellites. It was not a LEO system. The GPS field is full of badly researched articles many of which have ideological underpinnings. Sigh
Thank you for the further information.
But to be clear, I did not mean that your father was out of the loop in terms of participating in developments that allowed the GPS technology to come to fruition. (Although i did not know exactly what type of input he had in doing that.)
What I meant was that team of military men who were able to get the credit all to themselves apparently did not pal around with your father, nor did they all work at the same company. Had either of those elements played out differently, he most likely would not have been excluded by them from getting the credit that he deserved.
There certainly was rivalry between the Navy and the AF. I should that many AF people do not buy Parkinson’s story. Here’s my brief exchange with him. https://insidegnss.com/letters-timation-developers-honor-draws-fire/