 The invention of GPS was a collaborative and team effort.The basic architecture of GPS was devised in less than a month in 1972 by Colonel Bradford Parkinson, Mel Birnbaum, Bob Rennard, and Jim Spilker.However, Richard Easton, a son of Roger Easton who was the head of the U.S. Navy's "Timation" program, claims that his father invented GPS and filed U.S. patent #3,789,409 in 1974.