Geodesy     
War and GPS     
Part 1 of 3

   Next time you casually use GPS to find a restaurant, remember the 17 men and two women who helped lay the foundation - in the burning rubble of Nazi Germany. 

   In late 1944, Army Major Floyd Hough and his highly secret team entered Aachen (98 percent destroyed), looking for the library. They carried 1,800 pounds of cameras and other equipment for making microfilm records. 

   They also used 11,000 index cards of the Army Map Service and target lists of technical universities, government institutes, libraries and other places. The lists also named German scientists who might cooperate, and others who were not to be trusted.  

Behind THE LINES, Smithsonian

   The Aachen library was wrecked, but amazingly, stacked outside were bundles of folders that Germans left behind. These were precise survey data covering German territory - just what they were looking for. The team microfilmed the material and sent it directly to the front for Allied artillery units.    

   It was the first of many successes that hastened the end of the war, and also helped shape the world order for decades to come. Geodesy is the science of measuring the Earth with mathematical precision. Any point can be defined by numerical coordinates.   

   The teams' mission was to follow the army's front and "ride the first tank into Berlin." As it turned out, Germans had removed the material to preserve it. All the better.  

Tomorrow: The pope's library?