Global Positioning System Reference
In-Depth Information
9
Where are We?
GPS and GNSS Today
I once was lost but now am found.
John Newton, “Amazing Grace,” 1779
Like millions of motorists, thirty-two-year-old Jeramie Griffin, a construction
worker in Lebanon, Oregon, received a gps portable navigation device for
Christmas in 2009. 1 Black Friday price wars heralded the holiday shopping
season with a model from Garmin for eighty-nine dollars, while TomTom
undercut its rival with a ifty-nine-dollar loss leader, making its pnds the most
heavily purchased electronics item online that day. 2 What came unexpectedly
with Griffin's gift was fifteen minutes of fame. He tried his new gps unit for
the first time Christmas Eve, discovering a shortcut he believed would trim
forty minutes off the four-hour trek to his fiancée's relatives, who lived about
two hundred miles away, on the other side of the Cascade Range from the
couple's home in the Willamette Valley. 3 They packed their silver Dodge
Durango, bundled up their eleven-month old daughter, and departed about
3:30 p.m. Their gps guidance took them east into the mountains on a state
highway, then northeast along a local road, and finally onto one of numerous
 
 
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search