What
Come join us as we will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of
Geocaching here in Kalamazoo, Mi.
When
Friday April 30th, 2010 from 6:45 - 7:45 am. (yes, AM). You may
stay longer depending on what time you have to show up for
work.
Where
We will be meeting for a good hearty breakfast at Cracker Barallel
just off of I-94.
Who
Everyone and anyone are welcome at the event!
What Do I
Bring?
Bring a good hearty appetite. Be ready to share some of the best
memories you have of geocaching including best caches, best
memories, etc. Also, Please bring as many, of any
kind of Cans of Beans as you can. These will be displayed in
the group photo and then be donated to
a food bank to feed those in need. Perhaps we'll take the biggest
can of beans, bury it, and then find it 10 years from the event
date.
History of
Geocaching
(Taken from: AHistory of
Geocaching.)
GPS, or Global Positioning System, was developed by the US
Department of Defense. This satellite navigation system was
intended for military use and therefore the signals were scrambled,
limiting accuracy for civilian use to about 100 meters. On May 1,
2000, President Clinton announced that this scrambling, known as
Selective Availability (SA), would be turned off. Civilians were
then able to enjoy accuracy on the order of 10 meters. On May 3,
2000, Dave Ulmer proposed a way to celebrate the demise of SA. He
hid a bucket of trinkets in the woods outside Portland, Oregon and
announced its location in a posting made to the USENET newsgroup
sci.geo.satellite-nav. This announcement is remarkable for laying
out the essence of the hobby that is still in place today. It's all
there. The container. The trinkets. The logbook. The rule of take
something, leave something, sign the logbook. Dave Ulmer invented
geocaching in one fell swoop in that newsgroup posting. Within a
day, the original stash had been found. Within days, more stashes
had been hidden in California, Kansas, and Illinois. Within a
month, a stash had been hidden as far away as Australia. The hobby
was fast on its way to being a worldwide phenomenon. On May 8, Mike
Teague announced a Web site for collecting the locations of caches.
The original Web page is gone, but thanks to the Wayback Machine, a
copy of the GPS Stash Hunt Home page still exists. On May 15, James
Coburn set up a mailing list on eGroups (nowYahoo! Groups) for
discussion of geocaching. The list is still in existence. Its
archives contain the best record of the early days of the hobby. On
May 30, a new name was coined for the hobby. Matt Stumb suggested
"geocaching" to avoid the negative connotations of the word
"stash". So, within a month, the hobby had in place the rules, its
first hides and finds, a mailing list and a home page. And the
number of caches was growing fast. On September 2, 2000, Jeremy
Irish emailed the gps stash mailing list that he had registered the
domain name geocaching.com and had setup his own Web site. He
copied the caches from Mike Teague's database into his own. On
September 6, Mike Teague announced that Jeremy Irish was taking
over cache listings
Today the site of the first "stash" is marked by a
plaque("Original Stash Tribute Plaque" at GCGV0P). Other caches of
interest include: The oldest active Geocache east of the
Mississippi: "The Spot"(GC39) in Western NY. The Spot was hidden
May 26th, 2000. The oldest continuously active cache, "Mingo"
(GC30), in Kansas. It was placed less than two weeks after Dave
Ulmer's, on May11th. Also interesting: (GC12) placed May 12th in
Oregon, and Beverly(GC28), placed May 13th in Illinois.
The rest as they say is
history....
Add this event to your watch list for any
updated information.