Data Hacking

FIGURE 11-2: 20-yard uncertainty
The Birth of Geocaching
Chapter 11 — Hacking Geocaching
Without
Selective
Availability
On May 3, 2000, someone placed a container filled with treasure (well, not really “treasure” in
the true sense of the word — more like a few cheap trinkets) just outside of Portland, Oregon,
to celebrate the removal of SA. Within three days, the “cache” had been visited twice.
The first to find the container was a chap named Mike Teague, and he decided to create a
website to document and publish the location of these containers filled with goodies. These
locations were also posted on the sci.geo.satellite-nav newsgroup.
But the sport still didn’t have a proper, catchy title. This had to wait for someone else to get
involved. In July of 2000, Jeremy Irish came across Teague’s website and became hooked on the
sport. Irish approached Teague with ideas for the redesign of the website, along with ideas of
logging the finds online, mapping the finds, and creating an easier way for newcomers to the
sport to find and place these containers. Irish also came up with a new name for the sport, and
so the term geocaching was born. The treasure-filled containers were renamed geocaches, the participants
were called geocachers, and all of a sudden a lot of people became interested.
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