19771776 Club
A Cedar Rapids receiver locks onto the Navy's new atomic-clock satellite; the signal works
Collins Radio's five-channel receiver, the first of its kind, confirms the Timation program's navigation concept and clears the path for a Pentagon fix to a problem as old as seafaring.
In 1973 the Pentagon set out to fix a problem that had plagued navigators for centuries: knowing exactly where you are. In 1977, the U.S. Navy launched a navigation satellite carrying the first atomic clock into orbit, part of the "Timation" program that preceded GPS. Collins Radio Company (later Rockwell Collins), based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, built the first five-channel receiver capable of testing the new satellite signal. The system worked. Ten Block I satellites were launched between 1978 and 1985…
