The History of the Global Positioning System.
The GPS was conceptualized and invented by three main partners, which were the the Department of Defense, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Ivan Getting. The date it was invented was 1978 and it used solely for military purposes although the ideas that laid the foundation for the GPS went back as far as the 1950s. A satellite called Sputnik was launched in the year of 1957 from Russia. The researchers at MIT made some interesting discoveries with this satellite that laid the foundation work for the discovery of the GPS. They discovered that the radio signal from the satellite was best when it was over their position longitude-wise and latitude-wise directly. The signal decreased though when the satellite moved farther and farther away from their position on earth. From this exploration, they made the conclusion that you can track the orbit of the satellite depending on the signal strength of the radio signal of the satellite to the receivers on earth. The launching of the navigation system began in 1973 however the system was only tested during the time of 1973-1977. It was not until between 1978-1985 that the first 11 satellites were put into outer space. The atomic clocks were installed on these satellites to keep them in sync with the earth's rotation. The GPS first became available for public use in 1983. The choice to increase the number of the satellites to 24 in 1988 allowed for more reliable tracking of the earth since 18 satellites were limited in their performance and this project was not completed until 1995. After that year, GPS technology has radically advanced and is currently capable of tracking items within 10-15 meters of their actual position.