In the movie ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ James Bond follows Christopher Lee to his home, using a tracking device. Back in the mid 1970’s there was no such thing as Global Positioning Systems—GPS—that we know today. What we saw on the movie was the little black box with the tiny silver aerial and the flashing red light. James Bond opened the hidden radar compartment in his car and switched it to the channel for receiving the radar signal. Even though ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ was released in 1974, it is very possible that the film makers had little idea that just one year before that the GPS project came into being.
Back in the early 1940’s the Decca Navigator—a hyperbolic radio system—was developed to allow airplanes and water craft to locate their position using fixed radio signals as beacons. If you recognize the name Decca you might be familiar with Decca Records and it was their chief engineer, Harvey Schwarz, who was instrumental in the development of the Navigator. The LORAN—LOng RAnge Navigation—system was also for similar navigation and was primarily implemented by fishing vessels. It operates at a lower frequency on the radio waves—between 90 and 110kHz—and many other nations adopted the same systems.
GPS Tracking, Owned and Operated by DoD
Many people will not be aware that GPS is actually owned and operated by the U.S. Government. It is classified as a national resource, rather than a specific product, but GPS technology is not exclusive to the U.S. Government, as you will realize because you can purchase GPS devices in stores. However, the network of satellites is part of the ownership and operation of the Department of Defense. By Law, the Department of Defense is required to ‘maintain a standard positioning service—the SPS—and they must comply without unduly disrupting civilian uses. 1978 saw the first launching of an experimental GPS satellite. After the success of a further ten Block-I satellites the project continued and in 1989 the Block-II was launched and became the forerunner of what the GPS tracking systems we know today and in 2005 the first modern GPS satellite was launched.
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