Brief History

"The Global Positioning System as with most of other technological breakthroughs has been witness to a lot of change in the recent past. Initially built by the United States Department of Defense. Initially the GPS was designed with similar navigation systems such as LORAN (Long Range Navigation), which was developed in the 1940’s and used during World War II. As a result of the tensions between both the U.S and the Soviet Union when the Soviet Union launched its first man made satellite in 1957, the united states was inspired further to create their own machine. According to Wikipedia, two American scientists from the Johns Hopkins’s Applied Physical Lab (APL) with the help of the lab director were able to monitor transmissions for the Soviet man made satellite. This leads the APL to discover/develop the Transit System that was used by the United States Navy in 1960. This was a milestone event and discovery for the United States.By December of 1993, the GPS had achieved Initial Operational Capability and was running in full gear. However, the GPS service was open only to military personnel and in 1996, President Bill Clinton issued a policy declaring that civilians as well as military personnel should be able to have access to GPS devices.Today, the Global Positioning System comes in various forms. From the GPS’ people buy for their cars to the GPS devices automatically installed on phones one can easily discover where they are and get directions to locations whether in an emergency or not.