Smithsonian to display GPS pioneer's FoneFinder

GPS World, May, 2007

Boston inventor Robert Tendler is being recognized by the Smithsonian Institution for his groundbreaking work with GPS, reports the Boston Globe. Meanwhile, Tendler is engaged in a lawsuit against the General Motors business unit OnStar for patent infringement.

A patent lawyer, Tendler holds nearly a dozen patents. In the 1980s he developed Mayday Mike, a radio for use by boaters which used a speech synthesis circuit connected to a GPS device to broadcast latitude and longitude. By 1997, he'd built FoneFinder, a device that attached to the top of an Audiovox cell phone. A user would push a red emergency button on the FoneFinder, which would dial 911 and loudly pronounce latitude and longitude. Emergency workers could use the GPS data to find the caller's address. Considering FoneFinder an important precursor to today's GPS-assisted phones, the institute will display prototypes at the National Museum of American History when in reopens in 2008.

Tendler filed suit in U.S. District Court in Tyler, Texas, against OnStar. Tendler says that OnStar's technology, introduced to the public in 1996, violates a patent that Tendler received last year.

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