Moonage SpaceDream

This is just too cool and too simple:

Verizon Wireless, the No. 2 U.S. cell phone service provider, plans on Monday to launch a wireless service that lets parents check their children’s whereabouts and alerts them when they venture out of bounds.

Parents can use the service to set up geographic limits and receive text alerts if their children, who also carry phones, go too far from home. The service also lets parents check where their offspring are via a map on their cell phone or computer.

Now, GPS is not new.  It’s expanding rapidly right now and people are figuring new and innovative ways to use it, but it has been around a while for sure.  It was developed by the US Defense Department for some time.  It was released to the public in 1996.   

Here’s what it took to get this service to your door:

1938 Between 1938-1940, I.I. Rabi invents molecular-beam magnetic resonance at Columbia University in 1938. He and his colleagues apply magnetic resonance to fundamental studies of atoms and molecules. Possibility of atomic clock to measure gravitational red shift is discussed. Rabi is awarded the Nobel Prize for this work in 1944. 1949 Norman Ramsey invents separated-oscillatory-field resonance method at Harvard University, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1989. Jerrold Zacharias proposes using Ramsey’s method to create cesium-beam "fountain" clock that would be accurate enough to measure gravitational red shift. 1949 National Bureau of Standards operates atomic clock based on microwave absorption in ammonia gas. Work starts on cesium-beam atomic clock. 1954 Charles Townes at Columbia University demonstrates operation of the first maser based on emission of radiation from ammonia molecules. Townes shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in physics. 1954 Between 1954-1956, Zacharias and National Company develop the first self-contained portable atomic clock, the Atomichron. 1957 Sputnik is launched in October by the Soviet Union. Satellite Doppler tracking is inaugurated at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). Navy Transit program is started at APL in December. 1959 Albert Kastler and Jean Brossel, working in Paris and at MIT, develop methods of optical pumping. Kastler is awarded the Nobel Prize for this work. 1960 Ramsey and students Kleppner and Goldenberg operate hydrogen maser at Harvard University. 1960 Between 1960-1965, rubidium optically pumped clock is introduced. Cesium frequency standards are installed in most international time-standard laboratories. 1964 Between 1964-1965, first position fix from a Transit satellite is computed aboard Polaris submarine. 1967 Transit system is made available to civilian community. 1968 Standards of a Defense Navigation Satellite System are defined. 1973 Development of Navstar GPS is approved by the Department of Defense. 1974 First GPS test satellite, from Timation program, is launched to test rubidium clocks and time-dissemination techniques. 1977 Test satellite incorporating principal features of later GPS satellites, including first cesium clocks in space, is launched. 1978 Between 1978-1985, ten prototype GPS satellites are launched, built by Rockwell International. 1989 Between 1989-1993, series of 24 satellites are launched at about 6 per year. 1993 Final GPS satellite is launched on June 26, 1993. 1996 White House announces that a higher level GPS accuracy will be available to everyone.

After 70 years, and billions and billions of dollars in launching satellites, and being able to track minor earthquakes in the middle of nowhere, you can now know for sure where your kid is for a small fee.  That is, so long as they’re dumb enough to keep their phone with them if they venture too far.

Here’s some other GPS stuff that’s pretty popular already:

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