# GPS: four men who changed the world honoured. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 13, 2019, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451 "2019-02-13T10:48:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2019, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/1 "2019-02-13T10:48:06Z")
Four Americans who were behind GPS [have been honoured](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47212151) with the Queen Elizabeth Prize for engineering. GPS was originally military but since being opened up for civilian use it really has changed the world. Satnavs, dashcams, asset tracking, route finding, and ever so much more. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2019, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/2 "2019-02-13T11:08:47Z")
I was a late adopter to GPS. Now, I wonder how I ever navigated with just paper maps. I’ve been impressed how quickly every street has been mapped to a GPS coordinate. No easy task because some streets twist and wind their way around the city. Requiring multiple coordinates to keep it mapped. I rarely come across an error. GPS does have one in my city. My Garmin wants me to exit off the Interstate onto a side road, drive 3 miles, and connect to another Interstate. 😉 That’s not necessary, there’s a off ramp to the other Interstate. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2019, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/3 "2019-02-13T15:07:27Z")
I always said the guy that said “Necessity is the Mother of Invention” got it exactly backwards. Things get invented that are novelties at first, then they become so woven into our daily lives that we can’t live without them. Ok, I’m not a GPS addict. I love navigating without it, it’s how I learn my way around a new area and sharpen my sense of direction. But it’s become one of those things that can affect you even if you never use it yourself. A few years ago my family moved into a new home. A lovely brand new house on a lovely brand new little street. We were one of the first houses on the street. For several months during the critical time when we were moving and furnishing the home (and we purchased a lot of stuff as our old house was destroyed in a fire), our street did not show up on any GPS system. It was hell. An absolute nightmare. No one could find our house without multiple phone calls and detailed directions. Not even Amazon and the post office. Most of those phone calls began with the vendor insisting we had given them an incorrect address. We finally gave up and had all but the largest items delivered to a friend’s address. Then the street was added to the GPS system and our little street entered the world at last. ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2019, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/4 "2019-02-13T15:40:31Z")
> [@Ann\_Hedonia](#): > > I always said the guy that said “Necessity is the Mother of Invention” got it exactly backwards. Things get invented that are novelties at first, then they become so woven into our daily lives that we can’t live without them. > Ok, I’m not a GPS addict. I love navigating without it, it’s how I learn my way around a new area and sharpen my sense of direction. But it’s become one of those things that can affect you even if you never use it yourself. > > A few years ago my family moved into a new home. A lovely brand new house on a lovely brand new little street. We were one of the first houses on the street. For several months during the critical time when we were moving and furnishing the home (and we purchased a lot of stuff as our old house was destroyed in a fire), our street did not show up on any GPS system. > > It was hell. An absolute nightmare. No one could find our house without multiple phone calls and detailed directions. Not even Amazon and the post office. Most of those phone calls began with the vendor insisting we had given them an incorrect address. We finally gave up and had all but the largest items delivered to a friend’s address. Then the street was added to the GPS system and our little street entered the world at last. Whenever somebody gives me directions to their house, and tells me that GPS/Google maps/whatever is incorrect– I believe them. ---
**Author:** ![jaycat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaycat/32/3015_2.png) [@jaycat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jaycat)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2019, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/5 "2019-02-13T16:33:28Z")
I can’t begin to count the times “you have arrived at your destination” turned out to be a vacant lot. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2019, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/6 "2019-02-13T16:35:55Z")
How did they map all the streets to GPS? DId they send out crews of people to drive the roads and record the GPS coordinates? ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2019, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/7 "2019-02-13T16:38:42Z")
> [@jaycat](#): > > I can’t begin to count the times “you have arrived at your destination” turned out to be a vacant lot. My Garmin gets confused sometimes navigating parking lots. There was a store on a bluff. I’m sixty feet below it on a road. “You’ve arrived at your destination”. I had to look and look to see it. I had a heck of a time finding a road up there. ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2019, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/8 "2019-02-13T18:59:09Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > How did they map all the streets to GPS? > > DId they send out crews of people to drive the roads and record the GPS coordinates? I doubt it. With a few solid fixes, a good map should be usable for creating the GPS data. Even without a good map, aerial photography can definitely provide some substance to attach to a few well-measured way points. I can’t imagine there would be any need to actually drive the roads. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2019, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/9 "2019-02-13T19:40:59Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > DId they send out crews of people to drive the roads and record the GPS coordinates? Google certainly drives the roads - that’s how they built and maintain Street View. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2019, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/10 "2019-02-13T20:21:46Z")
> [@minor7flat5](#): > > I doubt it. With a few solid fixes, a good map should be usable for creating the GPS data. Even without a good map, aerial photography can definitely provide some substance to attach to a few well-measured way points. I can’t imagine there would be any need to actually drive the roads. GPS is just the system that uses satellites to determine where YOU are, not where anything else is. The way it works is essentially the same as navigation has always worked- a set of fixed points on the map are surveyed as to their exact positions in terms of that coordinate system, and everything else is referenced with respect to those points. It’s just coordinate geometry- your house is so many meters north/south and east/west of some point(s) based on where it is on the map, and they can calculate the latitude/longitude based on that. In other words, your house has a latitude and longitude value in Google Maps derived from the lat/long of some known point (probably a USGS benchmark or something similar). There’s no need for GPS usage here- it’s all old-school stuff. When you are using GPS, that tells you (and your phone) where YOU are, and it displays that on the map as your position. When you look up an address, they determine the coordinates for that point- I’m guessing that they probably have a big database of all that stuff obtained from various governments, who keep that sort of thing for all sorts of practical reasons. It’s public information anyway. So the reason that Ann Hedonia’s house wasn’t showing up was most likely because it wasn’t updated at City Hall/County Courthouse in the GIS system and thence to Google yet. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2019, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/11 "2019-02-13T22:38:51Z")
Wow, I can remember doing plugger training (there’s a set of initials there somewhere, damned if I know what though) in the army. The first and last thing they said every session was to make sure the correct map was uploaded because different maps had the coordinates set to different bench marks. It was just complicated enough that the people who got anywhere reliably and quickly were the ones who had their own civilian gps unit. ---
**Author:** ![Suburban\_Plankton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suburban_plankton/32/219_2.png) [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2019, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/12 "2019-02-13T22:57:07Z")
So Hedy Lamarr gets screwed over again? ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2019, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/13 "2019-02-13T23:13:28Z")
> [@Suburban\_Plankton](#): > > So Hedy Lamarr gets screwed over again? Cell phones, not GPS. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2019, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/14 "2019-02-14T01:07:46Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > How did they map all the streets to GPS? > > DId they send out crews of people to drive the roads and record the GPS coordinates? It’s just a map. Maps have had coordinates forever. Provided the map is accurately drawn (nothing to do with GPS, as noted above), and the map and GPS use the same coordinate system, your GPS position will be fairly accurately\* displayed on the map. \*GPS is not nearly as accurate as the general public have come to believe. It is pretty good but has limitations that can “smear” the position a fair bit (satellite geometry, reflections/refractions, timing errors, etc). Road navigation software is helped a lot by the fact you are almost certainly on a road so a GPS position that is slightly off the road will “snap” to the road. In applications where the possible positions are not as well defined the errors are more obvious. For example a mountain bike ride mapped with GPS will not stick exactly to the path taken and GPS _alone_ is not good enough to get a plane on to a runway _consistently_. It’s pretty good, but you wouldn’t want to stake your life on it. ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2019, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/15 "2019-02-14T05:29:52Z")
> [@Suburban\_Plankton](#): > > So Hedy Lamarr gets screwed over again? That’s [Hedley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoM-ZC7uNnc&t=43s)! ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2019, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/16 "2019-02-14T06:05:54Z")
I’ve been driving across country this week and I can readily imagine how much more difficult it would be without my GPS. I actually have made the trip without a GPS, using just maps but it made for a much worse traveling experience. You have to stick to an easy route and can’t make any spontaneous changes (and you have to hope no spontaneous changes are forced on you by circumstances). With a GPS, I can visit interesting places along the way without worrying about getting lost. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2019, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/17 "2019-02-14T08:07:05Z")
On the flip-side, they gave us Geocaching, the most pointless and stupid hobby ever. ---
**Author:** ![yendis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ed8c4c/32.png) [@yendis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yendis)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2019, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/18 "2019-02-14T11:54:53Z")
> [@guestchaz](#): > > Wow, I can remember doing plugger training (there’s a set of initials there somewhere, damned if I know what though) in the army. The first and last thing they said every session was to make sure the correct map was uploaded because different maps had the coordinates set to different bench marks. > It was just complicated enough that the people who got anywhere reliably and quickly were the ones who had their own civilian gps unit. [PLGR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_Lightweight_GPS_Receiver) which is the acronym for the AN/PSN-11 Precision Lightweight GPS Receiver. Something burned into my brain because the training guy on a project made me change all references in the technical manuals to plugger. And shortly after having done that I was made to change it all back again. ---
**Author:** ![filmstar-en](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/50afbb/32.png) [@filmstar-en](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmstar-en)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2019, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/19 "2019-02-14T12:29:15Z")
There is GPS and there are the Maps. Some maps are better than others and maps go out of date very quickly. Buildings get demolished, new ones built, roads change, new roads are built. For navigation using GPS an out of date map may lead up a blind alley because the map is out of date. Sat Nav companies buy data from mapping companies. The more you pay, the better the information and the more it is updated. Mapping coverage varies and so does the quality. Mapping is a big business. GPS itself is a fine invention and the award was well deserved. There are now several constellations of satellites operated by different countries that can be used by a GPS receiver and there new chipsets becoming available that will improve the accuracy to a couple of metres. These are not in your average smartphone yet, but they will be in the high end models coming out in the next year. Many new businesses and services depend on this technology. How to create better maps? Surveying is a laborious process often involving people on the ground. But it also uses aerial photography and this is getting much better due to one of the many uses for another invention, the drone. Very useful when nature decides to alter the geography quite suddenly.:eek: > **[Ordnance Survey to launch mapping drone](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47196898)** > > The mapping organisation's craft will collect images and data for businesses and organisations to use. ---
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8dc957/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2019, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451/20 "2019-02-14T12:33:25Z")
I’ll be damned if I let some corporate robot voice tell me where to go. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gps-four-men-who-changed-the-world-honoured/829451.md?page=2)