Geo Caching

WHile looking for some events in New Mexico while we are there and for some events or fun things to do this weekend, i came across a brief history of geo caching, thought that i would share with my friends and i guess we have president clinton to thank for some part of geo caching.

A (very) brief History of Geocaching:
On May 1, 2000, President Bill Clinton's executive order to discontinue "Selective Availability" allowing users to receive a non-degraded GPS signal globally was executed.

On May 2, 2000, at approximately midnight, eastern time, the switch controlling "Selective Availability" was thrown. Twenty-four satellites around the globe processed their new orders, and instantly the accuracy of GPS technology improved tenfold. Tens of thousands of GPS receivers around the world had an instant upgrade.

On May 3, 2000 Dave Ulmer placed the very first geocache, The Original Stash, a black bucket, in the woods near Beaver Creek, Oregon. Along with a logbook and pencil, he left various prize items including videos, books, software, a can of beans and a slingshot. He shared the waypoint of his "stash" with the online community on sci.geo.satellite-nav, and Geocaching was born.

On May 30, 2000 the word Geocaching was coined by Matt Stum on the "GPS Stash Hunt" mailing list. Geocache was the joining of two familiar words. The prefix geo, for Earth, was used to describe the global nature of the activity, but also for its use in familiar topics in gps such as geography.

On Sept 2, 2000 Jeremy Irish launched the Geocaching.com web site with 75 caches. Later that same year Jeremy partnered with Elias Alvord and Bryan Roth, two coworkers at Sunrise Identity and started a new company called Groundspeak, Inc.

Dec 26, 2006 - First 7 digit geocache id assigned