Who invented the first portable GPS?

Answer 1

Trimble Navigation invented the first portable GPS. It had shoulder straps so you could wear it like a backpack. Only the military had these, and they didn't buy very many.

Then came the Trimpack, the first hand-held GPS--also made by Trimble Navigation. It was six inches square and a little over an inch thick, it had a three-line alphanumeric display (no pictures, sorry) and a knob to control it. It ran on two really strange-looking lithium batteries--they were about the size of three C cells taped end-to-end, and both the positive and negative contacts were on the same end of the battery. This way you couldn't put the batteries in backwards in the middle of the night and fry your $5000 GPS. It didn't respond very fast and it had to be level to work right, so most of us put the device on the hood of our trucks and let it sit until it saw satellites. You certainly couldn't track satellites while driving the way you can with the current generation of them. Once again, it was a military-only technology--who else would spend $5000 for one?

I was using a 1990-era Trimpack just the other day (late 2010). It acquires satellites faster than many current consumer models, works when it falls onto the ground and once you get an initial lock, works just fine when moving. Even gives speed that you are moving. These were rebuilt when they left Army service into an aircraft version, which was basically the same thing, and stayed in use till fairly recently.

Answer 2

The first portable GPS device was developed by a company called Garmin in 1990. It was called the Garmin GPS 100.