In 1982 Charlie Trimble, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, paid Hewlett-Packard $80,000 for the remains of a canceled engineering project-shelves full of research notes, and the result of that research: a circuit board the size of a coffee table. The circuit board could pick up a signal from the first satellite in what would eventually become the Navstar Global Positioning System (GPS), a ring of 24 military satellites orbiting 18,000 kilometers above the earth.

Trimble's company, Trimble Navigation Ltd., has since shipped GPS receivers for applications as varied as tracking wild goats in Galapagos and measuring tectonic movements atop Mount Everest. In 1991, Trimble sent $7 million worth of receivers to Gulf War GIs. Trimble's principal competitors began their careers working for him before founding their own companies. And after nearly two decades of evangelizing, Trimble still hasn't lost his enthusiasm for the technology-there's not a trace of doubt in his voice when he lauds GPS for doing everything from ending world hunger to winning the Cold War. "Knowledge of position has tremendous benefits-to feed the world, to provide more efficient commerce and therefore better quality of life, to provide better safety and security," he says.