GPS

摘要

The Global Positioning System (GPS), a group of satellites providing precise locational information on a world-wide basis, is one of the foundational technologies of the twenty-first century. In his book simply entitled GPS, Paul Ceruzzi, a well-known historian of computing and aeronautics, proposes a short history of this technology and its many uses. Applying the social construction framework to the history of GPS, he argues that this technology was shaped by a number of institutions and social groups: the US Air Force, the US Navy, civilian agencies such as the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), large military contractors, Silicon Valley start-ups, mountaineers, recreational boaters and more recently smartphone designers. At first, the Global Positioning System grew out of military requirements. The Navy needed a way for its nuclear submarines to identify their exact location, without having to reach the ocean's surface and reveal themselves to the enemy. Instructed by the Vietnam war, the Air Force was interested in bombing accuracy. Pursuing these objectives, in the 1960s and early 1970s the Navy and the Air Force came up with different schemes for satellite-based positioning systems. But by the mid-1970s, these approaches coalesced, leading to the design of the Global Positioning System as we know it today.