|
|
Article: THE CLOCK IS TICKING ON SHIP NAVIGATIONAL SYSTEMS.(Business)
- Article from:
- Seattle Post-Intelligencer
- Article date:
- April 9, 1999
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of the Dialog Corporation by Gale Group. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
The navigational systems of older ships may fail at midnight on Aug. 21 when satellite clocks are reset, the International Maritime Organization warned this week.
The ``clock'' that controls the global positioning system used by ship masters to plot their course stops at midnight on the night of Aug. 21-22 and restarts immediately from zero.
Just as some computers may not recognize dates in the next millennium, some of the older GPS receivers on ships may not recognize the date after Aug. 21, said the IMO, the United Nations shipping agency.
GPS is a positioning system using satellites that was developed by the Air Force. The atomic clocks in ...