What is Geocaching - How it started

It all started in 2000 after turning off the selective availibity of the GPS signal by the U.S.
Since then, civil satellite navigation has been possible with pinpoint accuracy down to a few yards.

Dave Ulmer decided to make use of this for himself. On May 3, 2000, he hid a bucket containing a CD, a video cassette, some dollar bills, a book, a slingshot and a can of beans in a forest in the state of Oregon. He put the geographical coordinates on the Internet and challenged visitors to his homepage to look for the stash. The first finder got in touch with him just one day later.
And, with that, geocaching (geo = Greek for “earth” and cache = English for “secret store”) was born.

A little while later, Jeremy Irish created the website www.geocaching.com on which geocachers can publish their geocaches.
What all geocaches have in common is that they consist of at least a container with a logbook. The finder enters his or her name into the logbook and then hides the container again in exactly the same spot.