Jacobson Chronicles Evolution of GPS in New Book

Flying for GPS, a chronicle of Len Jacobson’s role in the development and promotion of the Global Positioning System, has just been published.

The book spans a 50-year career, during which Jacobson flew 2½ million miles as a missionary for GPS and as a developer of user equipment. He kept an extensive log of all of his flights, and it enabled him to recreate in his book much of what happened with GPS during his career, and his impressions of why these events occurred.

Flying for GPS covers the user-equipment evolution from expensive, complex and voluminous military sets to today’s low-cost chips buried in our cell phones. It traces a system designed primarily for military and civilian aircraft, ships, and land vehicles to an essential utility of everyday life, enabling new businesses, more safety, and the ability to track everything that moves. It is also a memoir written for the GPS community.

An excerpt of Flying for GPS will appear in the July issue of GPS World magazine. In 2013, Jacobson wrote about his early GPS experiences for the magazine.

Flying for GPS draws from Jacobson’s GPS experience while working for Hughes Aircraft, Magnavox, Interstate Electronics (IEC), and his own company, Global Systems and Marketing, Inc.

Len Jacobson.

He worked on various assignments from most of the major GPS companies and several small businesses that were trying to find a position in the GPS market. He also participated as an expert witness in many legal cases involving GPS, from patent disputes to accident reconstruction to parolee tracking.

In parallel with the evolution of GPS, the book chronicles the changes in commercial air travel as Jacobson experienced it, from flying on a PanAm 707 in 1963 to an Air France A380 today. The book is available now from www.xlibris.com, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and soon from ebook outlets.

Len Jacobson is a retired GPS consultant, having worked in the field since 1968. He is still active in the Institute of Navigation, for which he served as western regional vice president twice and held leadership roles in several of its conferences. He lives in Long Beach, California. Visit his site at www.lenjacobson.com.