Gary Burrell, co-founder of Garmin International, a unit of Garmin Ltd., died on June 12 at the age of 81. Burrell was an electrical engineer specializing in integrated avionics, designing and developing the first successful combined navigation receiver and communications transceiver (nav/comm) for the general aviation market. He held executive positions at such marine and aviation electronics companies as Lowrance Electronics, King Radio Corporation and AlliedSignal. In 1989, he founded Garmin with another electrical engineer, Min Kao, who was born in Taiwan and educated in Tennessee. Together they developed products based on the global positioning system, also known as GPS. The resulting GNS 430/530 product line combines GPS with traditional aviation navigation and communication systems and a moving map in color, while Garmin's G1000 cockpit system is now operational in thousands of small to mid-size planes.

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