A Step Towards GPS was Taken 60 Years Ago Today

Sixty years ago my father explored the state of atomic clocks. He called his Navsat Timation for TIMe navigATION. It required putting synchronized clocks in satellites to provide a receiver with its position. The clocks weren’t good enough so he pushed for a 2+ order of magnitude improvement over the next decade or so. The result of this process is GPS. Today, false stories about its origin are rife and I thought people would be interested in seeing an important document on the road to modern Navsats.

Last September, two false GPS anniversaries were widely accepted on Twitter/X. The 40th anniversary of the shooting down of KAL 007 was credited with opening up the system to civilian use. It was always open to civilians. Brad Parkinson’s story that he and twelve other people created GPS over Labor Day 1973 was widely accepted (with a Federalist article supporting this). That’s also not correct. Gladys West is widely credited with inventing a system she did not work on. Now I know why historians give credence to primary source materials.