Monday, Oct. 25, 2010

Magellan NAV 1000

After Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down in 1983 after a navigation error led them into Soviet airspace, U.S. President Ronald Reagan ordered GPS technologies to be freely available for civilian use. The first commercial handheld GPS receiver came six years later in the form of the Magellan NAV 1000, after the first civilian GPS satellite was launched. But it wasn't until 2000 when U.S. President Bill Clinton ordered that Selective Availability be turned off, which brought civilian GPS accuracy from 300 m to 20 m.