Good day, dear reader!
Ok, so contrary to what I declared in my last post, I didn’t ‘do better’ about posting to my blog as it has been three and a half years since that post.
In any event, I have several things on my mind that I plan to post here, the first of which is the concerted effort by the organized Progressive movement over the last seven decades to rewrite…or, as they call it in their own literature, “revise”…history in an effort to remold America and the world into the format they desire. I suspect that that this is an example of that plan.
On the 31st of August 2023, "The Federalist" published an article on its website by G. W. Thielman entitled, "How American Soldiers Invented GPS On Labor Day Weekend In 1973." Regrettably, even though Mr. Thielman has earned a Master’s Degree in Engineering and is employed as a Patent Attorney, his article is woefully lacking in the true details of the actual origin of the concepts and systems that would eventually be called GPS.
The first documented case of this concept being presented and promoted to the general public was in the February 1945 issue of "Wireless World" when a letter to the editor from astronomer, inventor, futurist, and author, Arthur C. Clarke was published. In the letter that he called, "Peaceful Uses for V2," he described how the scientific concepts that made the German V2 rocket program successful could be used to launch communication satellites into geostationary orbits. He explained that using a minimum of three evenly spaced satellites would provide ideal telecommunications relays. In May 1945, Clarke wrote a paper he entitled, "The Space Station: Its Radio Application," which he privately circulated among scientists and engineers. This paper expanded upon the concepts in the earlier letter and provided detailed analysis of how it would work. It was reprinted in the March 1968 issues of "Spaceflight" (Vol. 10, No. 3) and "Ascent to Orbit". There is currently a copy of this 1945 paper in the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.
In June 1945, he wrote "The Future of World Communications," a detailed technical article on the subject, and submitted it to the RAF censor on the 7th of July. Once it was approved, Clarke submitted it to "Wireless World". The article was published in the October 1945 issue, though the publisher renamed it, "Extra-Terrestrial Relays – Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?".
From late 1945 through the middle of 1946, Clarke and other scientists had several meetings with representatives of the governments of Great Britain and the United States, promoting his concept and explaining that by triangulating the orbital radio relays, they could also be used as navigational aids and course guides for cargo trucks on land and ships at sea. Unfortunately, the post-war governments did not believe they could invest funds into an ‘experimental technology’.
In a 1954 speech, John R. Pierce, one of the engineers on Bell Labs’ Echo and Telstar satellite projects, stated that he and his team were using ideas that were “in the air”, but that he had never seen and was unaware of any of Clarke’s articles or papers. In an interview he gave shortly before his death in March 1988 (Final Thoughts from Sir Arthur C. Clarke), Clarke was asked if he ever thought that one day his concept would become so important. His response was, “I’m often asked why I didn’t try to patent the idea of communication satellites. My answer is always, ‘A patent is really a license to be sued.’ “ As part of his legacy, though, the geosynchronous orbit used by all communications and GPS satellites is known by scientists and engineers worldwide, and particularly by NASA and the Royal Astronomical Society, as the ‘Clarke Orbit’.
As you can see, the concept that would be eventually called the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System was conceptualized, designed, published, and promoted 12 years before the launch of Sputnik 1, and 21 years before the U.S. Air Force’s Proposal 621B. This, however, is not the only shortfall of Mr. Thielman’s article.
In 1956, a civilian programmer by the name of Mrs. Grace West was hired to work at the Naval Proving Ground (now known as the Naval Surface Warfare Center). Mrs. West was only the second black woman ever hired at that facility, and one of only four black people working there. After the Sputnik launch, she was moved to the Dahlgren Division and became a satellite data analyst. In the early 1960’s, she was part of an award-winning team that proved the regularity of Pluto’s motion relative to that of Neptune, and was subsequently assigned to analyze altimeter data from NASA’s Geodetic Earth Orbiting satellite program. Her superlative work earned her a promotion to Project Manager of the SEASAT Radar Altimetry project where the process improvements she implemented cut her team’s processing time in half and she was recommended for a commendation.
From the early 1970’s through the 1980’s, Mrs. West kept improving the computer programs used to analyze satellite data, allowing for more and more precise calculations of the shape of the Earth. Her efforts enabled her to prove that the Earth, rather than a sphere, was in fact an ellipsoid with geoid undulations. She created complex algorithms to allow for variations in gravitational, tidal, and geoidal forces that distort the Earth’s shape, allowing for exponentially more accurate topographic mapping. Culminating with her technical report, "Data Processing System Specifications for the Geosat Satellite Radar Altimeter," published by the Naval Surface Weapons Center in 1986, Mrs. West created all of the computer programing that allowed Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s vision to be fully realized and made the modern Global Positioning System accurate to within less than 50’ of an object’s true location.
While I have the utmost respect for the members of all branches of the U.S. military, I am a pragmatist and firmly believe that ”Lügen haben kurze Beine“, i.e., the Truth will out. The Truth is that Col. Parkinson’s focus group of Air Force officers invented nothing over Labor Day Weekend in 1973. All they did was identify the then-modern technologies that would allow them to implement a prototype version of the system originally invented, first documented, and repeatedly proposed in 1945 by Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Furthermore, the Truth is that their ‘beta‘ version would never have gone any further than plotting the location of objects within an area of 2 – 3 square miles of their true location if not for the original programing work of Mrs. Grace West. While Mr. Thielman did give a ‘hat tip‘ to Kepler, Faraday, Maxwell, Planck and Einstein for doing the work and making the foundational discoveries that allow Humanity to understand the science necessary for the GPS system, he, or possibly the source of his research, has completely ignored the two people who are the foundation of the technology, without whom Global Positioning wouldn’t be much more than a ‘best guess‘.
Be well, Dear Ones! Until next time...
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