Some technologies are always coming, but never seem to get here (fusion). Some technologies are always coming, never seem to get here, and then they’re here (A.I.). Some technologies are here and evolve and improve slowly over time (TV).
GPS seems to have just appeared. Of course it didn’t, and actually has a long history. But to most of us it just appeared.
Like many other large projects (space, the Internet, the Human Genome Project), GPS was complex and expensive enough that only a large government could make the investment to get it off the ground. It requires 24 satellites in medium-earth orbit, and a bunch of advanced physics (special relativity plays a key role).
The U.S. Department of Defense started work on GPS around 1973, with the first satellite launching in 1978. Although not even fully operational, GPS was used extensively in the 1991 Gulf War.
GPS would go on to underpin a wide variety of important day-to-day activities, not the least of which was crossing the country without asking for directions. It would also underpin some fun ones, in particular geocaching.
Alan’s second GPS receiver was a Garmin GPS 12. Unlike his first one, it did not require a PowerBook for its readout and was portable enough for Alan and Priscilla to get in on the geocaching craze fairly early on. At one point they even discovered a geocache in the alley behind their house (long gone now).
Alan would go on to acquire a dozen or so GPS receivers after that. Much less excessive than it sounds, those receivers were in the iPhone 3G, 4, 5 and beyond.* As it often did, Apple had again taken a Future technology and distributed it to the rest of us.
Alan and Priscilla’s most recent GPS receiver? The one in their first new car since the iPhone 3G!
*The original iPhone (2007) did not include GPS, but did enable “crossing the country without asking for directions” and similar features through cell tower and Wi-Fi navigation.