Invisible Stars - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 69

5

invisible Stars
How GPS Works

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic.

Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Lim-
its of the Possible , 1973

Throughout history new technologies have intimidated those unschooled in
their operation, and inventions sometimes have been branded as sorcery or
witchcraft. This was true of early mechanical clocks; many eleventh-century
“commoners” attributed their origin to the devil, so the introduction of clocks
for general use flowed through the church, where monasteries found them
useful for waking monks at prayer hour. 1
Noted astronomer Herbert Hall Turner, former chief assistant at the Royal
Greenwich Observatory and president of the Royal Astronomical Society from
1903 to 1905, once observed that to secure the Longitude Prize John Harrison
“first had to disprove a charge of witchcraft by showing that his wonderful
clock could be duplicated by another workman.” 2 Since the Witchcraft Act of
1736 had repealed prior laws treating witchcraft as real and recast the crime