"Before GPS became an everyday utility, it was a hard mathematical problem.
In the 1950s–70s, Gladys West, a mathematician at the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia, worked on one of the most difficult challenges in satellite navigation: accurately modeling the Earth itself.
Modern GPS accuracy depends on:
• Precise satellite ephemerides
• Accurate gravitational field modeling
• Correct Earth reference frames
West’s work directly advanced all three.
Her contributions weren’t widely recognized at the time. In fact, it wasn’t until 2018 that she was inducted into the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame—decades after GPS reshaped global navigation, logistics, finance, defense, and mobile computing...
Before GPS could tell us where we are, someone had to define what the Earth actually looks like—mathematically…”
#Engineering #GPS #Geodesy #STEM #TechHistory #WomenInTech #DataScience #Infrastructure #WomenInGeoSpatial
H/T Evan Kirstel

"Before GPS became an everyday utility, it was a hard mathematical problem.
In the 1950s–70s, Gladys West, a mathematician at the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia, worked on one of the most difficult challenges in satellite navigation: accurately modeling the Earth itself.
Modern GPS accuracy depends on:
• Precise satellite ephemerides
• Accurate gravitational field modeling
• Correct Earth reference frames
West’s work directly advanced all three.
Her contributions weren’t widely recognized at the time. In fact, it wasn’t until 2018 that she was inducted into the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame—decades after GPS reshaped global navigation, logistics, finance, defense, and mobile computing...
Before GPS could tell us where we are, someone had to define what the Earth actually looks like—mathematically…”
#Engineering #GPS #Geodesy #STEM #TechHistory #WomenInTech #DataScience #Infrastructure #WomenInGeoSpatial
H/T Evan Kirstel

Did you know that the 'NT' in Windows NT stood for "Nine Ten"?

The intended core platform for the OS was the then-expected Intel i910 RISC processor, which was to be the rebranded moniker for the i860 that can be found in the wild.

It never came to be due to the i860s terrible handling of context switching -- a capability that a CPU for a multitasking, multiuser workstation OS must be able to do very_efficiently. The i860 wasn't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTkFGZqVCM8&t=459s

** EDIT: Several have pointed to sources indicating differently that NT stood for N10, which was the codename for the i860, so -- N10, N-Ten > NT.

#TIL#WindowsNT#Windows#Intel #i860 #i910 #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing#OS#techhistory#RISC #x86 #processors #computers #computinghistory#Microsoft