Navy Hidden Hero: Gladys Mae West and GPS

Gladys Mae West grew up with a desire to succeed in life. During her 42-year career Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division was part of the team that developed the Global Positioning System (GPS) in the 1950s and 1960s.

She grew up in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, and knew was that she did not want to work out in the sun in the fields and as such did well in school. West then went on to college and graduated four years later. In 1956, hired at Dahlgren to work on a new computer and had to master the job, learning how to program and code. This led her into scientific computations of the initial GPS over water. This became the foundation that GPS is built on.

(U.S. Navy video/Released)