How Dr. Gladys West Made GPS Possible

By Swapna Krishna

The STEM fields are full of significant innovators who sadly never got the recognition they deserve. These people, many of whom are under-recognized female scientists, were pioneers in their fields. They achieved great things but didn’t receive due credit because they were women of color (and often specifically Black women). In the 1950s and 60s, many Black women worked as engineers and “human computers,” enabling the dawn of the space age and the era of modern computing.
 

Dr. Gladys West is one of STEM’s hidden trailblazers. She helped develop technology that contributed to the creation of the Global Positioning System, or GPS, which revolutionized modern society. Her contributions have been hidden for too long. We’re excited to discuss both Dr. Gladys West and the ins and outs of how GPS works.

 

How Does GPS Work?
 

When we’re going about our daily lives, we use GPS constantly but don’t really think about what it is. How does GPS work? The United States’ GPS relies on a constellation of thirty-one satellites in Earth orbit (other countries have their own GPS systems), according to the FAA. They work in concert with ground stations that pinpoint the precise position of these satellites at any given time. Receivers are what we utilize (our phones, car infotainment systems, etc.) to access the GPS network.
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Receivers are able to listen for signals from this satellite constellation. After communicating with a minimum of four separate satellites, they can pinpoint a user’s location to within seven meters, with about ninety-five percent accuracy.

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Dr. West’s Background
 

Born in 1930 in rural Virginia, Dr. Gladys West was the daughter of Black sharecroppers and worked the fields as a child. She knew education was her way to a different life, so through hard work, she excelled and received a scholarship to college. She earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics and continued on to pursue a master’s degree.
 

In 1956, she began her career at the United States Naval Weapons Laboratory. Her role was to collect and process data from satellites, which she used to help pinpoint their exact locations in space. This experience as a “human computer” helped Dr. Gladys West lay the foundations for the modern technology of GPS. Though it might have seemed small at the time, Dr. West’s computer program is what paved the way for pinpointing a person’s location on the Earth through satellite tracking. It was this work that laid the foundations for GPS.

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Swapna Krishna operates at the intersection of technology, space, science, and pop culture. She's the host of PBS’s latest YouTube show Far Out, focused on the next few decades in science and technology. She is a journalist, writer, communicator, and editor specializing in the geek space. She posts space and science videos on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. She's a regular contributor at StarTrek.com and StarWars.com, She covers sci-fi for New Scientist, books and video games for NPR, and she writes a biweekly video games column at Wired called Casual Gamer. Her writing has appeared in outlets such as The Verge, Polygon, Fast Company, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Business Insider, Slate, and more.