GPS World, September 2010
The very first GPS brochure ever published accompanied by a memoir of those times T he first time I ever heard of the Magnavox Research Laboratory in Torrance California was in 1966 as a young engineer working at Hughes Aircraft We were building large 46 foot diameter ground stations for the Defense Satellite Communications System DSCS Magnavox was supplying the secret anti jam modems used in the terminals Because of this I also learned a little about spread spectrum pseudo noise PN something quite esoteric at the time and not taught in engineering school I noticed a widespread respect for Magnavox from my colleagues who referred to the company and its equipment as Magicbox Within a year I had transferred to the Hughes division responsible for developing satellites We were working on a study known as 621B for using satellites for positioning Our teammate for the study was Magnavox That team was responsible for the payload signal design for which the team chose PN as the modulation to provide for multiple access ranging data transmission and anti jam Before long my boss decided to leave Hughes and go work for Magnavox He took two of his systems engineers with him I was one of them In1968 the U S Air Force could not yet sell the 621B concept as an Advanced Development Program so instead opted to experiment and prove that PN modulation could be used to accurately measure a half mile of cable Hughes bowed out since there wasnt any satellite procurement in the offing Magnavox and the other 621B contractor TRW each took on the challenge of measuring the cable Where Hughes had been 10 deep in Ph D s in every discipline Magnavox was 10 deep in PN experts which I believe at that time was the worlds majority Thus it was natural for the Air Force to ask them to continue and develop a receiver to be used in the next phase of 621B An inverted range was set up with Early Days Len Jacobson GPS World September 2010 www gpsworld com 44
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