| By :
Roger Brown
Altitude watches and GPS watches and the technology behind them came about as a result of electronics miniaturization efforts by the United States military. These timepieces were first used in military exercises and the technology was developed to help soldiers in the field. Despite popular belief, GPS was never meant to locate your car in a parking lot. It was a planned by the government to install enough satellites in space orbiting the earth to allow positioning of military equipment and launch military exercises against enemy combatants. That all brings us to state-of-the-art today. It's amazing what functions you can get on such a watch. Here are just a few of the main ones: 1. Elevation above sea level 2. Pressure of the outside air 3. Temperature of the ambient air 4. Weather predicting capability 5. Calendar 6. Alarm 7. Stopwatch It is even possible to tell the tides positions and accurately when a high or low tide will occur with this type watch. Solid-state computer miniaturization has allowed this technology to flourish in recent years. It's simply astounding that we could have watches with sensors for barometric pressure and altitude within a device that's less than the size of a silver dollar in diameter. If you spend a lot of time out in the woods, you will undoubtedly run across other people that have very fancy and cool watches. It's just like all the iPads one sees at Starbucks these days. In our society the level of one's technology determines one's coolness factor. That of course is not the reason to buy a product like this though. You don't want to buy something like this for someone else. You don't want to spend hundreds of dollars just to impress somebody else that your watch is better than theirs. But, if you are going to get a product like this anyway doesn't hurt to make it one that helps your self-esteem a bit as well. The main reason you get a product like this altitude watch is that it can keep you alive in the wilderness. What I mean by that is if your primary instruments fail, you will have a backup device to use in their stead. Keep in mind that with an altitude watch that more functions is not always a better thing. Some watches have so many bells and whistles that you almost can't figure out the ones that are important because the watches so crowded with information. Stick to the key functions that will be most viable on the type of outdoor activity that you do. In other words, if you are hiking a lot in the woods and staying out overnight, you need basic weather predicting capability either in the form of a direct barometric pressure readout that you can interpret yourself or, weather predicting capability within the watch itself through trend analysis of the same data.
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