Geocaching hasn't been around for a terribly long
time, but the cache listings from the first few months are like
ancient manuscripts... We page through them (at least, the ones we
can find) to piece together what it was like back in the beginning
- when the first cachers were trying to figure out what the heck
geocaching even *is*. Every new cache had the potential to
dramatically affect the evolution of the game - either "What a
great idea!" or "Uh, I don't think we should ever do that again..."
Pretty interesting stuff.
Some tidbits from those heady early days...
- The Global Positioning System was originally developed by the
government as a military tool. Although it was made freely
available for civilian use, the signal was intentionally crippled,
making it impossible for ordinary citizens to get accuracy closer
than about 300 feet. This was fine for general navigational needs,
but useless for turn-by-turn driving assistance - to say nothing of
trying to locate a small camouflaged container for a game like
geocaching. On May 1st 2000 the government turned off this
intentional degradation of the signal (called "Selective
Availability"), instantly improving consumer-level accuracy to
within 30 feet.
- To celebrate this moment, on May 3rd Dave Ulmer placed the
first geocache and posted the coordinates in the Usenet group
sci.geo.satellite-nav. Much of what we recognize as a geocache
was there from the get-go... posted coordinates, a hint/description
of the hide, a container stocked with goodies, "take something,
leave something", a logbook to sign. (But, the container was buried
- oops.) Within 48 hours, Mike Teague became history's first
FTF.
- It didn't start out as "geocaching" - originally it was the
"GPS Stash Hunt". After about a month, Matt Stum suggested the term
"geocaching" on the gpsstash mailing list, and for most of the the first
year stash and cache co-existed.
- Groundspeak was not the first to organize cache listings into
a searchable database. That breakthrough was first engineered by
Mike Teague (the first FTF!) and maintained as the GPS Stash Hunt Homepage. These listings were
later ported to Jeremy Irish's geocaching.com site as demand
continued to grow.
- Trackable items go back almost as far as geocaching itself. It
is widely accepted that the first geocoin was designed and placed
by Moun10Bike in
September 2001 and was one of the very first traveling items
trackable through groundspeak's web site. But a few enterprising
cachers had been developing their own traveling items and methods
to track them long before - Mr. Tata
Head was released in December 2000 and may well be the first
travel bug ever.
This cache stands as a tribute to the early days of geocaching -
and more specifically, to the early days of Manhattan geocaching.
Much of what dominated the national geocaching conversation in
those first few months wasn't particularly relevant to the
Manhattan game. I tip my hat to the local pioneers who laid the
foundation here for what we now know as "urban caching". The
historians among us are lucky that we can still visit an heirloom
of those early days - the (in)famous 4quA5 cache, placed in
mid-2001, just months after the first Manhattan geocache was
published (and in fact the only currently active cache on
the island placed before 2004).
The idea behind the coordinates of this cache is simple,
conceptually. In practice - a bit of research is required.
The container is located at the cache centroid for every
Manhattan geocache that preceded 4quA5 - the Original
Colonists.
As you search for these listings, you will discover (or recall,
depending on how long you've been around) some of the great
pioneering caches of the game's history, including not just the
first cache on Manhattan or the first cache in Central Park, but
also:
- The world's very first LPC!
- The world's very first traveling cache!
- The world's very last APE cache!
Use the posted coordinates for any puzzle caches, not the final
coordinates. In case you are feeling any uncertainty about where
exactly the "line" of Manhattan is, use the groundspeak proximity
guidelines - if it's within 528 feet of what you're sure is
Manhattan, consider it Manhattan. (To be clear, we are referring to
Manhattan Island; don't concern yourself with all of the
technicalities of New York County.) Note! You must include a
sneaky Colonist that claims to be from New Jersey, despite
what are clearly Manhattan coordinates! But don't fret - if you've
found most of the other Colonists, you should be able to track down
this one too.
Two of the caches were never found, which doesn't make things
any easier. But because I am sympathetic to your plight, here is a photo of the hider of one of those
unfound caches looking for, but failing to find, the other
one of those unfound caches. (I'm totally not joking.)
There are a number of different software applications and tools
that can be used to calculate a centroid - contact me if you are
having difficulty figuring out how to find one. Once you
successfully calculate ground zero, you'll be looking for a small
waterproof container hidden amongst the stones that line the
western edge of a paved footpath.
If groundspeak ever re-enables searches for archived caches, I'm
going to have to knock down the difficulty rating on this one - but
in the meantime, good luck! For the FTF, 2TF, 3TF & 4TF I have
rubber banded a bit of paper currency, to some tiny little masked
martial arts figurines dressed in black. ** Update - until I run
out of supplies, these little trophies will be available for all
finders **
You can check your answers for this puzzle on
Geochecker.com
