NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Dip-meter again
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2012 Apr 12, 11:19 -0700
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2012 Apr 12, 11:19 -0700
Yep.
Come to think of it, I did see it in the wonderful GPS World article on the history of GPS. Strongly recommend following Richard's link and reading through the entire series of articles on the history of GPS.
Lu
From: Richard B. Langley <lang@unb.ca>
To: NavList@fer3.com
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2012 4:58 AM
Subject: [NavList] Re: Dip-meter again
Is this the photo?
http://www.gpsworld.com/gnss-system/gps-modernization/the-origins-gps-part-2-fighting-survive-10010
-- Richard
On 11-Apr-12, at 5:54 PM, Lu Abel wrote:
> If you read the history of GPS, soon after Sputnik's launch American scientists figured one could get positional data (maybe only a line-of-position, not a fix) from the Doppler shift in a satellite's signals. This resulted in a very hush-hush project that resulted in the Transit system. Multiple US defense projects then looked for a next-generation follow-up. Fortunately (at least for the modern world) the projects were merged with the best ideas from each being selected as the projects consolidated and moved forward. One specific I remember is that one of the projects proposed that the receivers contain an atomic clock! For 1960s or early 1970s technology, not unreasonable -- we had not seen the dramatic effects of shrinking semiconductor technology. Fortunately, that got changed. There's a wonderful picture of a soldier wearing a full backpack with a large antenna sticking out of it. It's a single-channel GPS receiver! (wish I could find a copy to attach, but I can't)
>
> From: Alexandre E Eremenko <eremenko@math.purdue.edu>
> To: NavList@fer3.com
> Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2012 11:14 AM
> Subject: [NavList] Re: Dip-meter again
>
>
> Richard,
> Thanks.
> Do you know how accurate it was?
>
> > The first TRANSIT satellite was launched in 1961. The system was
> > declared operational in 1964 and became classified. In 1967 it was
> > declassified and became available for civilian use.
>
> Alex.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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