GARMIN was established in 1989 in Lenexa, Kansas, USA, by Gary Burrel and Min Kao. At first the company was called ProNav and its first product was a GPS unit sold at a price of US$2,500. Later the company was renamed Garmin. The first names of the two founders Gary and Min served as the basis for the name of the company.

From the earliest days the company has been engaged in the production of navigation equipment on the basis of Global Positioning System (GPS). At first it was navigator equipment intended only for aviation, but gradually the product range began to expand.

Today GPS navigator is a usual thing for us. We got used to this invention very quickly. Nowadays one can hardly find a motorist with a paper map, on which the desired routes and orientation are marked with a pencil. Now we are informed by a navigator where and when to turn. History reminds us that people began to think about the way to make life easier in finding the right route as early as the beginning of the 20th century. The first hand navigator called Plus Fours Routefinder was made in Britain in 1920. It consisted of wooden handles, which had to be scrolled manually, and paper maps.

A mechanical navigator was invented about ten years later. The principle of operation was simple: a paper map with applied graphics was scrolled in the screen. Scrolling speed of the map was proportional to the vehicle speed. But it worked only on a straight road. There was a problem when it was needed to turn: a motorist had to change a map by himself and identify his actual position on it.

Modern car navigators, which are named Global Positioning System or GPS, have appeared in our life due to military people. And before they appeared on the market for ordinary people they have had their own half-century history. It started in October 4, 1957, when the Soviet scientists launched into orbit the first artificial Earth satellite. The whole world was watching the flight of the satellite. It was the Americans who identified the dependence between radio signals frequency, which the satellite emitted, and parameters and coordinates of its motion. This phenomenon was confirmed by the Doppler law, which was laid at the basis of the development and later the launch of the first modern analogue of GPS navigation. That project started in 1958. In 1983 they started to use GPS for civil purposes.

Today one of the world's leading manufacturers of GPS-navigation systems, both for ordinary people and professionals, is considered to be Garmin. A multinational corporation meets the requirements of GPS navigation solutions in differing areas of human activities both in military, aviation, marine and in sports, tourism, everyday life. The whole process of the Garmin devices production from design to the full release is carried out by the company itself.

There are many modifications of GPS navigators: from professionals, having larger screens and a variety of features and capacities, to amateur ones, very small like watch cases. By May 2014 the company has sold more than 126 million GPS devices. Most devices of Garmin can display the current location on maps, which are stored in the built-in memory or loaded from a flash media. Different Garmin maps are available in the market, detailed road maps, topographic and nautical maps included.

But it is unfair to consume that Garmin produces only navigators. An important component of the company's portfolio is software that is used in different equipment. Since January 2008 the company entered the smartphone market, presenting Garmin nüvifone - smart phones equipped with a large touch screen, focused primarily on personal GPS-navigation. Considering that a Taiwan manufacturer Asus is engaged in phone assembling, a full phone name is Garmin-Asus nuvifone. The name «nüvifone» is a derivative from «nüvi», the best-known car navigators of Garmin.

Today Garmin is a huge company, representations of which are located all over the world and products are in demand worldwide.