My Geocaching pages
My "Bio" has
already explained my other Interests..
These pages try to explain what GeoCaching is and why I love it so much.
Firstly the word GeoCaching
comes from the two words
GEO meaning geographic
CACHE meaning a Store or Stash
A brief History and explanation of Geocaching
It all started back in May
2000 when US President Clinton announced the built in "scrambling" (or
Selective Availability)
of data received from GPS Satellites was being removed.
These days the majority of
us use GPS... Global Positioning Satellites.. in our In-car Sat-Navs
Hikers.. Fell Walkers... Climbers and a host of other "outdoor type folk" us
Hand Held Sat Navs every time they follow their Hobby.
The GPS system of
satellites was originally designed for US Military use and featured a built in
scrambling or error that meant you could
not accurately position a receiver to better than 100metres.
From May 1st 2000 anyone using a GPS could use accuracy in the order of 10 Metres.
On May 3, 2000, Dave Ulmer
proposed a way to celebrate the demise of SA (Selective Availability.. The
Scrambling of the signal)
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 log book.
The rule of take something, leave something, sign the logbook.
Dave Ulmer invented geocaching in one fell swoop in that newsgroup posting.
From these early days the
Hobby has grown to what it is today...
an estimated 3-4 Million active Geocachers (the folk that DO Geocaching)
Worldwide
looking for in excess of 1.1 Million Active Geocaches (the Hidden caches)
Worldwide.
The 1 Millionth Cache was
placed in March 2010.. just under 10 years for the first Million
It is expected the next Million will be passed within 18 Months at
the present growth rate. (official figure.. my estimate is closer to 12 months
!)
It's plain to see that Geocaching is growing at an astonishing rate Globally
I'm not going to
babble on about the History... its all available for all to see here on the Web:
http://geocaching.gpsgames.org/history/
SO.... What IS GEOCACHING ?
Basically.. it's a Modern Day Outdoor HIDE and SEEK using GPS Technology
OK.. so now the majority of
folk browsing this page will have clicked the BACK button on their browser and
gone off to find something
more Adult or challenging in their mind.
For those visitors who are
still reading this....
THANK YOU and once again, WELCOME.
I hope I can spark off an Interest in this Hobby which will eventually lead to
you joining us and having fun.
PAGES ON THIS WEBSITE
