Treasure Hunts

Geocaching is the modern day, high tech equivalent of a treasure hunt. An article in the Journal News from the lower Hudson valley describes the sport this way:

Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunt, using global positioning system devices. The game has been played worldwide. Geocachers obtain geographical information - latitude, longitude, and elevation - of hidden containers, or geocaches, through the Web site www.geocaching.com

Global Positioning Units (GPSs) have been available for civilian use for 25 years, since 1983. If you are curious about the technology of satellite navigation or the history of GPS systems see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gps In the current era of rapidly evolving and improving digital technology where computers and digital cameras become obsolete in a couple of years, the same sort of rapid improvement has been taking place in GPS systems. It seems to me that the technology is nearing maturity.

I now have a GPS on my motorcycle which knows all the streets in America and can talk to me; a wrist watch GPS that works great and has very good battery life; a GPS attached to my camera so that the EXIF data shows where the shot was taken, elevation above sea level, and the exact atomic clock time it was taken; and a really large touch screen GPS in the car which does routing, and also stores thousands of MP3s which I can play back when I’m out on the road far away from radio stations. And entry level GPSs have now gotten inexpensive enough virtually anyone can afford one. If you can afford a cell phone and a good digital camera, you can certainly also afford a handheld GPS.

This is a fun little short article on geocaching: http://observer.case.edu/Archives/Volume_41/Issue_1/Story_2781/

Here is another good article: http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008808310333

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