Bradford Parkinson life and biography

Bradford Parkinson (February 16, 1935) is an American engineer and inventor, and United States Air Force colonel best known as the father of the Global Positioning System.

In 1973, Bradford W. Parkinson was appointed program director for the US Department of Defense's joint military program to coordinate advanced navigation systems being developed separately by the Navy, Air Force, and other services.

He oversaw development of the Global Positioning System (GPS), a coordinated array of 24 satellites that broadcast and receive signals from ground stations and mobile receivers, allowing military targeting to within ten meters. The actual invention of GPS is usually credited to Roger Easton or Ivan Getting.

After retiring from the Air Force, Parkinson spent one year teaching, but then decided to enter the private sector. He first was appointed Vice President of the Space Systems Group at Rockwell International, Inc., where he was involved in developing the space shuttle. Following his work at Rockwell, Parkinson joined Intermetrics, a software company based in Boston. Parkinson was a vice president at Intermetrics, and was heavily involved in taking the company public in 1982. 1984, Parkinson accepted a research position at Stanford University.

However, Parkinson later returned to the private sector in 1999, where he served as the acting CEO of Trimble Navigation, a producer of advanced positioning systems. Today, Parkinson sits on the boards of several large navigation-related companies, including Trimble Navigation, EMS Technologies, and Navigation Technology Ventures.Early in his career, Parkinson was an academic instructor for test pilots at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, but soon moved on to other projects. Immediately after retiring from the Air Force, Parkinson returned to Colorado, taking a position teaching mechanical engineering at Colorado State University.

However, after only one year, Parkinson's budding academic career was cut short by his detour into the private sector. After five years outside of academia, however, Parkinson returned to his alma mater Stanford, where he became research professor focused on GPS and related technologies. After several years he was given tenure, and was named to the endowed "Edward C. Wells" Chair of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Beyond his research duties, Parkinson was also an active and well-liked teacher, creating and leading the popular “Managing Innovation” course. Today, Parkinson is a professor emeritus at Stanford.

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