The Geography of Radionavigation and the Politics of Intangible Artifacts

During the middle of the twentieth century, radionavigation systems became an important part of the built environment. They created a durable, semi-permanent spatial framework for a wide variety of tasks—everything from intercontinental air travel to new forms of high-precision surveying. This article argues that these systems constructed a new kind of transnational geography, well before satellites, and that large-scale spatial integration followed more from political failure and commercial competition than from the kind of top-down military politics later associated with GPS. The article also sees radio as one of a broad class of related phenomena—intangible artifacts—that are undoubtedly material, but only selectively visible, obstinate, or "thingy." These artifacts share a particular spatial and temporal logic and have played a crucial role in the emergence of new forms of geographic power during the last hundred years.