Dissertation Research: The Cold War, Position, and Gravity:The World Geodetic System and the Sociotechnological Evolution of Geodesy from Space

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This dissertation research project will generate the first history of modern geodesy to integrate materials from the recently-declassified CORONA reconnaissance satellite program and ancillary geodetic programs. In doing so, it will make a contribution to Cold War earth science and bridge the disciplines of history and geography. In revealing and exploring the previously hidden origins and evolution of World Geodetic System (WGS), the project will demonstrate that the civilian, military, and intelligence communities were bound to each other in complex ways that reflect the impact of the Cold War on the processes of knowledge production. The work necessarily straddles the interdisciplinary common ground between geodesy and remote sensing on the one hand, and the history of technology on the other, and borrows terminology and methodology from both. The project will 1) analyze why and how the WGS was created, and by whom, and the extraordinary constraints imposed upon its creators by the context of the Cold War; 2) interview individuals involved in the process and examine the technology hardware and organizational structures that accomplished the created of WGS so that the technological ensemble is documented as far as possible; and 3) relate the specific case of WGS to a `shuttered box` model of the sociotechnical ensemble. WGS as a case study of technological development is characterized by an extremely tight link between classified military and parallel civilian technologies, where flows to the latter resulted in unanticipated increasing returns that made further dual use and even declassification possible. Research methods include an examination of now declassified archives and primary and secondary sources, interviews with WGS scientists, and revisting previous descriptions of WGS to examine both how the work was really accomplished, and also how the accomplishment was disguised.