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Crazy Wisdom

Episode #501: From Atomic Clocks to Smartphones: The Real Story of GPS

Episode #501 · October 27, 2025 · 58 min

MP3 · Apple Podcasts · Spotify

About this episode

In this episode of Crazy Wisdom, host Stewart Alsop talks with Richard Easton, co-author of GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones, about the remarkable history behind the Global Positioning System and its ripple effects on technology, secrecy, and innovation. They trace the story from Roger Easton’s early work on time navigation and atomic clocks to the 1973 approval of the GPS program, the Cold War’s influence on satellite development, and how civilian and military interests shaped its evolution. The conversation also explores selective availability, the Gulf War, and how GPS paved the way for modern mapping tools like Google Maps and Waze, as well as broader questions about information, transparency, and the future of scientific innovation. Learn more about Richard Easton’s work and explore early GPS documents at gpsdeclassified.com, or pick up his book GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones.

Check out this GPT we trained on the conversation
Timestamps
  • 00:00Stewart Alsop introduces Richard Easton, who explains the origins of GPS, its 12-hour satellite orbits, and his father Roger Easton’s early time navigation work.
  • 05:00Discussion on atomic clocks, the hydrogen maser, and how technological skepticism drove innovation toward the modern GPS system.
  • 10:00Miniaturization of receivers, the rise of smartphones as GPS devices, and early mapping tools like Google Maps and Waze.
  • 15:00The Apollo missions’ computer systems and precision landings lead back to GPS development and the 1973 approval of the joint program office.
  • 20:00The Gulf War’s use of GPS, selective availability, and how civilian receivers became vital for soldiers and surveyors.
  • 25:00Secrecy in satellite programs, from GRAB and POPPY to Eisenhower’s caution after the U-2 incident, and the link between intelligence and innovation.
  • 30:00The myth of the Korean airliner sparking civilian GPS, Reagan’s policy, and the importance of declassified documents.
  • 35:00Cold War espionage stories like Gordievsky’s defection, the rise of surveillance, and early countermeasures to GPS jamming.
  • 40:00Selective availability ends in 2000, sparking geocaching and civilian boom, with GPS enabling agriculture and transport.
  • 45:00Conversation shifts to AI, deepfakes, and the reliability of digital history.
  • 50:00Reflections on big science, decentralization, and innovation funding from John Foster to SpaceX and Starlink.
  • 55:00Universities’ bureaucratic bloat, the future of research education, and Richard’s praise for the University of Chicago’s BASIC program.
Key Insights
  1. GPS was born from competing visions within the U.S. military. Richard Easton explains that the Navy and Air Force each had different ideas for navigation satellites in the 1960s. The Navy wanted mid-Earth orbits with autonomous atomic clocks, while the Air Force preferred ground-controlled repeaters in geostationary orbit. The eventual compromise in 1973 created the modern GPS structure—24 satellites in six constellations—which balanced accuracy, independence, and resilience.
  2. Atomic clocks made global navigation possible. Roger Easton’s early insight was that improving atomic clock precision would one day enable real-time positioning. The hydrogen maser, developed in 1960, became the breakthrough technology that made GPS feasible. This innovation turned a theoretical idea into a working global system and also advanced timekeeping for scientific and financial applications.
  3. Civilian access to GPS was always intended. Contrary to popular belief, GPS wasn’t a military secret turned public after the Korean airliner tragedy in 1983. Civilian receivers, such as TI’s 4100 model, were already available in 1981. Reagan’s 1983 announcement merely reaffirmed an existing policy that GPS would serve both military and civilian users.
  4. The Gulf War proved GPS’s strategic value. During the 1991 conflict, U.S. and coalition forces used mostly civilian receivers after the Pentagon lifted “selective availability,” which intentionally degraded accuracy. GPS allowed troops to coordinate movement and strikes even during sandstorms, changing modern warfare.
  5. Secrecy and innovation were deeply intertwined. Easton recounts how classified projects like GRAB and POPPY—satellites disguised as scientific missions—laid technical groundwork for navigation systems. The crossover between secret defense projects and public science fueled breakthroughs but also obscured credit and understanding.
  6. Ending selective availability unleashed global applications. When the distortion feature was turned off in May 2000, GPS accuracy improved instantly, leading to new industries—geocaching, precision agriculture, logistics, and smartphone navigation. This marked GPS’s shift from a defense tool to an everyday utility.
  7. Innovation’s future may rely on decentralization. Reflecting on his father’s era and today’s landscape, Easton argues that bureaucratic “big science” has grown sluggish. He sees promise in smaller, independent innovators—helped by AI, cheaper satellites, and private space ventures like SpaceX—continuing the cycle of technological transformation that GPS began.
Episode transcript
Stewart Alsop III00:00

Welcome to the Crazy Wisdom Podcast. This podcast is for you. If you have an insane drive to find the truth of things, it's not the good answers that we seek, but the good questions. I interview a range of different guests from many different fields, all with the intention to uncover the simple truths that are hidden in plain sight. Most people don't want to go there. I go there, my guests go there, and you benefit. Please let me know if you enjoy these episodes and as always, subscribe on itunes, Spotify or wherever you listen to the podcasts. Welcome to the Crazy Wisdom Podcast. I've got Richard Easton here and he is the co author of GPS Declassified From Smart Bombs to Smartphones and he's been studying GPS for 20 years. Welcome to the show.

Richard Easton00:52

Thank you. Good to be here.

Stewart Alsop III00:54

So GPS is crazy. I know from our tweets conversations that GPS was invented and it's so fundamental to our world, I know so little about it, but I imagine I'll be understanding a lot more about it after this interview. Global positioning system, is that right?

Richard Easton01:14

Yes.

Stewart Alsop III01:16

And so what is it? There's something about triangulation, right? Like me being here triangulating something and then there's a satellite involved, Is that it?

Richard Easton01:25

Well, it's got satellites in 12 hour orbits. Okay. They're in six constellation, each symmetrically 60 degrees apart. There's a minimum of 24. Typically these days, the US system has 31. There's legacy issues. Why they don't go beyond 32, so two to the fifth. And the history of the program is subject of much controversy. My father, Roger Easton, started working on his time navigation system in 1964, thinking that atomic clocks would advance enough that it would make a GPS type of system feasible. The Air Force was working on their Project 621B in 1973, they set up a joint program office headed up by the Air Force. The GPS program was approved that December, but it's a subject of much controversy over when civilian use arose, who did what, Everyone invented it. But for the inventors, I mean, you go to Twitter X and I can get people angry on many different issues on gps, say that's not correct.

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