Success Has Many Fathers - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 44

transmitter and receiver station clocks in Texas. In October he realized while
on Naval Reserve duty that this would also make a good navigation system.
However, other documents show that Timation's origin was more complicated.
In a May 1967 slide presentation, Roger Easton stated, “To my knowledge the
idea of using passive ranging as a navigation technique was a result of a con-
versation between myself and Dr. Arnold Shostak of onr [Office of Naval
Research] in 1964. Dr. Shostak was explaining how the hydrogen maser worked
and obtained its fantastic time-keeping ability. At the time I remarked that this
device appeared to make passive ranging feasible. He agreed and I spent a
week working on the idea.” 16
He sketched more details in a June 9, 1964, memo showing how passive
ranging works and discussing the accuracy of different types of atomic clocks.
A July 1971 nrl chronology tracing the history of Timation states that it began
in April 1964, so the conversation with Shostak probably took place then. 17
It is not surprising that a discussion about atomic clocks between two Navy
scientists led to a space-based navigation system using precise clocks. As shown
in the preceding chapter, there is a historical linkage between maritime navi-
gation and precise timekeeping. The chronometer was also known as the marine
chronometer. Prior to the advent of aircraft, maritime travel was much faster
than land travel apart from railroads, which followed fixed routes. The first
atomic clock was an ammonia maser device built in 1949 at the U.S. National
Bureau of Standards. Office of Naval Research funding supported the devel-
opment of the first cesium atomic clock in 1951 and of the first hydrogen maser
atomic clock in 1960. A paper Easton coauthored in the 1970s mentions that
“in 1963, Study Group VII of the International Radio Consultative Committee
referred to the advantages which might be expected to accrue from the use of
time signal emissions from artificial earth satellites, and urged studies of the
technical factors involved.” 18
Timation's initial test on October 16, 1964, used an nrl engineer's convert-
ible. Matt Maloof drove along the unfinished Route 295 with a transmitter in
his car, and people at nrl tracked his position. 19 Chester Kleczek, an engineer
at Naval Air Systems Command, commented that Maloof was impressed that
they could tell when he changed lanes. The results were sufficient for Kleczek
to convince his boss, John Yob, to approve $35,000 for additional work. This
was the largest amount Yob could give on his own authorization. The bureau-
cracy might have held up a larger amount, and it could have drawn opposition
from proponents of Transit, which was also funded by Naval Air Systems Com-