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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…

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More from July 19
1943

690 American bombers hit Rome; 9,125 bombs fall on San Lorenzo, killing 1,500

A freight yard and steel factory were the targets, but apartment blocks and a papal basilica took hits too; Pope Pius XII walks the rubble before day's end.
1848

Stanton and Mott open a women's rights convention in Seneca Falls; 300 gather at the Wesleyan Chapel

A Declaration of Sentiments modeled on the Declaration of Independence is read on the first day, its most disputed line demanding the vote for women.
2013

Cassini turns its camera toward Earth; Saturn's shadow makes it possible

Imaging leader Carolyn Porco positioned the spacecraft to catch the sun eclipsed by Saturn, putting Earth in the frame 1.44 billion kilometers away, and millions look up and wave.
19341776 Club
The 785-foot helium scout located the cruiser Houston unannounced; the President radios his compliments on the navigation.
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More from Cold War America
1968

Apollo 7 lifts off from Cape Kennedy; America flies astronauts again

Twenty-one months after the Apollo 1 fire killed three astronauts on the pad, a Saturn IB carries three more into orbit.
1984

Sullivan steps outside Challenger; first American woman to walk in space

Over the next three and a half hours she and David Leestma pumped hydrazine into a mock satellite to prove orbiting spacecraft could be refueled.
1976

A thread-like shape appears under the electron microscope in Atlanta

CDC virologists Fred Murphy and Alyne Harrison get the first clear image of the virus killing hundreds in Sudan and Zaire.
1962

A U-2 camera finds Soviet missiles ninety miles from Florida

The film still has to be developed and read before Washington even knows what it has.
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