
2018 IEEE Medal of Honor Goes to GPS Pioneer, Bradford W. Parkinson - sohkamyung
http://theinstitute.ieee.org/resources/ieee-news/ieee-medal-of-honor-goes-to-gps-pioneer
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userbinator
Note that a homemade GPS receiver is not beyond the skilled hobbyist (although
you aren't going to reach the miniaturisation of commercial products):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13246682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13246682)

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stefanpie
Woah, thanks for the resource. With technology I feel as if it's super easy or
convenient to get stuck in the more simplified aspect of the maker / hobbiest
community and feel as if your cheating yourself by using premade breakouts and
boards and so on. I'm not saying it's bad by no means at all, they are great
tools. I just feel in my personal experience, it took me a while to realize
how to dig deeper into subjects like this. Instead of just buying GPS recivers
form some company like adafruit, It would be nice to have more resources like
this that go deep into the concepts and push you into new unfamiliar
"territory" to learn new things. That's how I felt when I finally understand
microcontrollers we're more than just the Arduino board and IED; that most
microcontrollers are essentially the same platform just different
implementations each with their own tools and established workflows. I would
love to see more resources that kinda break down this barrier / mindset for
beginners and allow them to understand and approach any new technology and
explore it as advanced as they like.

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CamperBob2
GPS was one of the very first widespread applications of digital signal
processing. The more you learn about its inner workings, the more impressed
you'll probably be that they came up with it in the 1970s. Parkinson is
definitely a worthy recipient of the medal.

As a technical feat, it's somewhat reminiscent of the compatible NTSC color TV
standard that emerged in the early 1950s. These people did stuff they simply
should not have been able to do with the technology of the day.

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sohkamyung
The Proceedings of the IEEE published a special issue on GPS in 1999 [1]. It's
mostly paywalled but the "Scanning the Issue" article [2] is not and gives a
pretty good overall history of GPS.

[1]
[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isnumber=15872](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isnumber=15872)

[2] (PDF) [
[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=736338](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=736338)
]

