Ivan Getting played a crucial part in the development of some of America’s most lethal weapons, but will be best remembered for his part in the development of a system now used by millions of civilians: GPS.
Now in common use for anything from trekking across the polar wastes to finding a way through Scarborough’s one-way streets, the Global Positioning System is a worldwide satellite-based means of radio-navigation operated by the US Department of Defence. It allows a user to find out where he is anywhere in the world, and to tell the time with extreme accuracy. Yachts, boats, cars, planes, gliders and many other vehicles are equipped with Global Positioning as a means of pinpointing positions and destinations and to map routes, and the miniaturisation of electronics will soon make the receivers no larger than credit cards.
The system is used by civilian pilots for navigation and for instrument landing at airports, small or large. It can be used to find ships lost at sea, and is invaluable for surveying, for monitoring earthquakes, and for tracking the positions of satellites in space. The technology is already a multi-billion-dollar industry and it is expected to grow more than tenfold over the next decade. In Japan, for example, more than a half a million cars carry GPS receivers to enable the drivers to see where they are and to follow their route on a map displayed on a television monitor.
The Global Positioning System was designed for military use and is still a military system, but the companies that built it saw a huge potential market and put great pressure on the Pentagon to make the system available for civilian use. Eventually, the Pentagon did so. However, the Pentagon reserves the most accurate signals for military use only, and can introduce errors into the civilian signal without notice to reduce its accuracy.
Two services are provided: the Standard Positioning System (SPS) and the Precise Positioning System (PPS). Once a user has bought a receiver, including antennae, and a processor, SPS is free of charge, continuously, anywhere in the world. It allows the user to identify his latitude and longitude to an accuracy of 95 per cent horizontally and 156m vertically. And it allows time to be measured to an accuracy of 340 nanoseconds. It also allows the accurate measurement of velocity and altitude.
The Precise Positioning Sevice is a military positioning and timing service, protected by crytography and available only to users authorised by the US Government. This allows positions to be measured to an accuracy of at most 22m horizontally and 27.7m vertically, and time to be measured to an accuracy of 200 nanoseconds.
The system consists of 24 operational satellites — four satellites in each of six orbital planes — the last of which was launched into orbit in June 1993. The system was formally declared operational on April 27, 1995. However, with several of the satellites already operational in their circular orbits 20,200km above the Earth, Global Positioning had been used in the 1991 Gulf War by US troops for navigation on land, sea and in the air, and for targeting bombs and for missiles. Troops found it particularly useful to locate themselves in the featureless desert.
Ivan Alexander Getting spent his long working life as a military scientist and technologist. He was born in 1912 in New York and raised in Pittsburgh.
He showed considerable academic ability at a young age, and won a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in physics. As a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, he was then awarded a doctorate in astrophysics in 1935. Returning to the US he was granted a junior fellowship at Harvard to work on cosmic radiation.
While at Harvard he designed one of the essential components of the first digital computers, when they were developed in the 1940s: the high-speed flip-flop circuit. A flip-flop circuit can be in either of two states, which will be reversed by an incoming pulse. It can thus be used as a one-bit storage device.
In 1940, soon after the Second World War began, Getting returned to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to work in the radiation laboratory. He became the head of the laboratory’s Army and Fire Control Radar Division, the group responsible for the development of almost all the ground-based radars used by the US Army during the war. Londoners and people in the Home Counties owed much to this group, for its SCR-584 automatic radar tracking radar and fire-control system played a major role in shooting down German V1 cruise missiles — the dreaded doodlebugs — and saved perhaps tens of thousands of lives.
In 1950 Getting went to work at the Pentagon as assistant of development planning for the US Air Force, but the following year he moved on to the Raytheon Company of Lexington, as vice- president for research and engineering. Under his direction, Raytheon became the first company to produce transistors commercially.
He was also responsible for the development of its AIM-7M Sparrow III and Hawk missiles. The radar-guided air-to-air Sparrow-III, with a range of 44km, was introduced in 1962 and remained in service for many years.
The Hawk (Homing All-the-Way Killer) surface-to-air missile system became operational in 1959 and the missile was produced up to the early 1980s. It was designed to hit low-flying enemy aircraft and to be capable of travelling with a field army. It was the most widely used surface-to-air missile in the world. Foreign customers included at least 16 countries. The 5m missile had a range of about 35km and was controlled by a battery control centre using continuous wave radar able to spot low-flying aircraft.
In 1960 Getting became the co-founder and president of the Aerospace Corporation, a military research and development company based in El Segundo, California, which he ran until he retired in 1977. It was while working at Aerospace Corporation that he led the development of the satellite technology which, with the help of Professor Bradford W. Parkinson of Stanford, was to become the space-based Global Positioning System.
Getting worked for decades on the design of the system, analysing its operational value, and ensuring that his vision would come to fruition.
The technology has almost limitless uses. It is being applied with huge advantage in a very large number of areas of civil life, and is revolutionising warfare by making available a wide range of precision-guided bombs and missiles, unmanned aircraft and robotic vehicles. As always, the technology is being misused, too, with terrorists, smugglers and organised criminals putting it to nefarious use.
While continuing to take a deep interest in the development of GPS, Getting served on the US Navy Studies Board and the undersea warfare committee of the US National Academy of Science. He was much involved in the development, among other weapon systems, of the Polaris submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missile.
Getting received many honours and awards. He was a fellow of the American Electrical and Electronic Engineers and of the American Physical Society, and an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He was awarded the US President’s Medal of Merit, the John Fritz Medal, the Kitty Hawk Award, the US Air Force Exceptional Service Award, and the US Navy’s Superior Public Service Award.
He is survived by his wife, Helen, and by two sons and a daughter.
Ivan Getting, scientist, was born on January 18, 1912. He died on October 11, 2003, aged 91*
*The Times - 27 Oct 2003
Now in common use for anything from trekking across the polar wastes to finding a way through Scarborough’s one-way streets, the Global Positioning System is a worldwide satellite-based means of radio-navigation operated by the US Department of Defence. It allows a user to find out where he is anywhere in the world, and to tell the time with extreme accuracy. Yachts, boats, cars, planes, gliders and many other vehicles are equipped with Global Positioning as a means of pinpointing positions and destinations and to map routes, and the miniaturisation of electronics will soon make the receivers no larger than credit cards.
The system is used by civilian pilots for navigation and for instrument landing at airports, small or large. It can be used to find ships lost at sea, and is invaluable for surveying, for monitoring earthquakes, and for tracking the positions of satellites in space. The technology is already a multi-billion-dollar industry and it is expected to grow more than tenfold over the next decade. In Japan, for example, more than a half a million cars carry GPS receivers to enable the drivers to see where they are and to follow their route on a map displayed on a television monitor.
The Global Positioning System was designed for military use and is still a military system, but the companies that built it saw a huge potential market and put great pressure on the Pentagon to make the system available for civilian use. Eventually, the Pentagon did so. However, the Pentagon reserves the most accurate signals for military use only, and can introduce errors into the civilian signal without notice to reduce its accuracy.
Two services are provided: the Standard Positioning System (SPS) and the Precise Positioning System (PPS). Once a user has bought a receiver, including antennae, and a processor, SPS is free of charge, continuously, anywhere in the world. It allows the user to identify his latitude and longitude to an accuracy of 95 per cent horizontally and 156m vertically. And it allows time to be measured to an accuracy of 340 nanoseconds. It also allows the accurate measurement of velocity and altitude.
The Precise Positioning Sevice is a military positioning and timing service, protected by crytography and available only to users authorised by the US Government. This allows positions to be measured to an accuracy of at most 22m horizontally and 27.7m vertically, and time to be measured to an accuracy of 200 nanoseconds.
The system consists of 24 operational satellites — four satellites in each of six orbital planes — the last of which was launched into orbit in June 1993. The system was formally declared operational on April 27, 1995. However, with several of the satellites already operational in their circular orbits 20,200km above the Earth, Global Positioning had been used in the 1991 Gulf War by US troops for navigation on land, sea and in the air, and for targeting bombs and for missiles. Troops found it particularly useful to locate themselves in the featureless desert.
Ivan Alexander Getting spent his long working life as a military scientist and technologist. He was born in 1912 in New York and raised in Pittsburgh.
He showed considerable academic ability at a young age, and won a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in physics. As a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, he was then awarded a doctorate in astrophysics in 1935. Returning to the US he was granted a junior fellowship at Harvard to work on cosmic radiation.
While at Harvard he designed one of the essential components of the first digital computers, when they were developed in the 1940s: the high-speed flip-flop circuit. A flip-flop circuit can be in either of two states, which will be reversed by an incoming pulse. It can thus be used as a one-bit storage device.
In 1940, soon after the Second World War began, Getting returned to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to work in the radiation laboratory. He became the head of the laboratory’s Army and Fire Control Radar Division, the group responsible for the development of almost all the ground-based radars used by the US Army during the war. Londoners and people in the Home Counties owed much to this group, for its SCR-584 automatic radar tracking radar and fire-control system played a major role in shooting down German V1 cruise missiles — the dreaded doodlebugs — and saved perhaps tens of thousands of lives.
In 1950 Getting went to work at the Pentagon as assistant of development planning for the US Air Force, but the following year he moved on to the Raytheon Company of Lexington, as vice- president for research and engineering. Under his direction, Raytheon became the first company to produce transistors commercially.
He was also responsible for the development of its AIM-7M Sparrow III and Hawk missiles. The radar-guided air-to-air Sparrow-III, with a range of 44km, was introduced in 1962 and remained in service for many years.
The Hawk (Homing All-the-Way Killer) surface-to-air missile system became operational in 1959 and the missile was produced up to the early 1980s. It was designed to hit low-flying enemy aircraft and to be capable of travelling with a field army. It was the most widely used surface-to-air missile in the world. Foreign customers included at least 16 countries. The 5m missile had a range of about 35km and was controlled by a battery control centre using continuous wave radar able to spot low-flying aircraft.
In 1960 Getting became the co-founder and president of the Aerospace Corporation, a military research and development company based in El Segundo, California, which he ran until he retired in 1977. It was while working at Aerospace Corporation that he led the development of the satellite technology which, with the help of Professor Bradford W. Parkinson of Stanford, was to become the space-based Global Positioning System.
Getting worked for decades on the design of the system, analysing its operational value, and ensuring that his vision would come to fruition.
The technology has almost limitless uses. It is being applied with huge advantage in a very large number of areas of civil life, and is revolutionising warfare by making available a wide range of precision-guided bombs and missiles, unmanned aircraft and robotic vehicles. As always, the technology is being misused, too, with terrorists, smugglers and organised criminals putting it to nefarious use.
While continuing to take a deep interest in the development of GPS, Getting served on the US Navy Studies Board and the undersea warfare committee of the US National Academy of Science. He was much involved in the development, among other weapon systems, of the Polaris submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missile.
Getting received many honours and awards. He was a fellow of the American Electrical and Electronic Engineers and of the American Physical Society, and an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He was awarded the US President’s Medal of Merit, the John Fritz Medal, the Kitty Hawk Award, the US Air Force Exceptional Service Award, and the US Navy’s Superior Public Service Award.
He is survived by his wife, Helen, and by two sons and a daughter.
Ivan Getting, scientist, was born on January 18, 1912. He died on October 11, 2003, aged 91*
*The Times - 27 Oct 2003
