Now that Thanksgiving has passed, I feel that I can talk about Christmas (retailers and radio stations start way too early. This bugs me as a big fan of Thanksgiving).

I love having a Geek Wife.  Not only am I married to someone who understand me, she also introduces me to more geek items that I wasn’t aware of.  She introduced me to the website that NORAD set up to track Santa Clause on Christmas Eve.    http://www.noradsanta.org/

NORAD tracking Santa just off the North American coast in 2007

It has now become a tradition on December 24th (Just as the International Date line crosses over to December 25th) to visit the website and keep an eye on where Santa has visited.  The website will update every five minutes with different reports and videos on where Santa has been.  At the time that Santa is scheduled to pass over our place, my wife would run past the kids bedrooms (they would be tucked in by that time) playing the Christmas bells (luckily we would already have the presents under the tree).

How did NORAD get in the business of tracking Santa through the skies?  On December 24, 1955 an advertisement had been placed in a Colorado Springs newspaper asking kids to call Santa at the number printed and they would be able to keep track of Santa’s location through out the world.  The only problem was the number was listed incorrectly in the ad.  Instead of ringing the store, it rang to Col. Harry Shoup at the Continental Air Defense Command Operations Center.  A ton of calls came in from excited kids asking where Santa was.  Instead of hanging up on the kids, Col. Shoup asked his operators to find the location of Santa and report it to every kid that called.  This started a tradition at NORAD that continues until today.  Using satellite systems, high-powered radars and jet fighters several hundred volunteers track Santa and respond to telephone calls and emails from around the world (from both adults and kids).  The Track Santa website with NORAD is translated into six languages.  The 2006 tracking effort alone had 1 billion hits to the website (from 210 countries), a half a million calls were made to the hotline and over 12,500 emails were received.

Perhaps NORAD should alter their motto to “Deter. Detect. Defend. Deliver.”

This entry was posted on Friday, November 28th, 2008 at 9:27 am and is filed under Holiday, internet, website. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.