“There are abundant technical details about the design and operation of the system, but the book is entirely accessible to the intelligent layman….This book is an essential history of how this technology came to be, how it works, and where it may be going in the future.”
— John Walker, founder of Autodesk, Inc. and co-author of AutoCAD
Tag Archives: navigation
Fourmilog – John Walker
GPS Declassified Cited in Wilson Quarterly Article
A recent article, “Launching the Brick Moon: GPS’ Path from the Space Race to Smartphone,” by Aaron Lovell in the Wilson Quarterly, references GPS Declassified and quotes coauthors Richard Easton and Eric Frazier. Lovell summarizes GPS history, starting with the earliest concept for an artificial satellite conceived by Edward Everett Hale in 1870, and follows the story all the way to present issues raised the app economy, made possible by smartphones.
Wilson Quarterly is produced by the Communications Department of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC.
Quest – Roger D. Launius
“… A solid basic history of the subject. As an introduction it is quite useful. It also seeks, in the authors’ minds, to correct what they view as errors and omissions in the GPS origins story. Finally, it tells quite a number of stories about the uses of GPS and how the technology has changed our lives, and then they go on to project possibilities for uses yet to be realized. This is a useful work about a complex topic.”
–Roger D. Launius, Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly, vol 22, no 1
Filed under Reviews
Tagged as book review, Global Positioning System, GPS, Naval Research Laboratory, navigation, Quest, Roger Easton, space history, spaceflight, Timation
Richard Easton on The Milt Rosenberg Show
Listen as longtime Chicago radio host Milt Rosenberg talks with Richard in a wide-ranging interview that spans the early days of GPS, the role that his father, Roger Easton, played in its development, and the future of the technology.
Filed under News
Tagged as atomic clocks, GPS, Milt Rosenberg, Naval Research Laboratory, navigation, NRL, privacy, Roger Easton, satellites, smartphones, Space Surveillance, Sputnik, Timation, timing, tracking, Vanguard
NRL, Media mark the passing of Roger Easton
Following the death of Roger L. Easton on May 8, the Naval Research Laboratory and numerous media outlets have published tributes to his life as a scientist and inventor. Follow the links below to read a selection of these stories:
Tech Crunch – Roger Easton, Father of GPS, Dies at 93
Bloomberg – Roger Easton, GPS Developer for Satellite Navigation, Dies at 93
Valley News – A Life: Roger Lee Easton Sr., 1921 — 2014; ‘Most of All, He Was a Solver of Problems’
Filed under News
Tagged as GPS, Naval Research Laboratory, navigation, NRL, Richard Easton, Roger Easton, satellites, space, space history, Space Surveillance, Timation, timing, Vanguard
Richard Easton on The Space Show
Following the death of his father, Roger Easton, Richard talked with Dr. David Livingston, host of The Space Show, about his father’s groundbreaking work with satellites and accurate clocks, leading to the development of the Timation satellite navigation system and ultimately GPS. Listen to the podcast here.
Filed under News
Tagged as atomic clocks, GPS, Minitrack, Naval Research Laboratory, navigation, NRL, Richard Easton, Roger Easton, satellites, space history, Space Surveillance, Sputnik, Timation, timing, Vanguard