Gary Burrell

Gary Leon Burrell (24 August 1937 to 12 June 2019) was an American electrical engineer, businessman and philanthropist who co-founded Garmin with Min Kao and later served as its chairman emeritus. Born in 1937, he earned an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at Wichita State University and a master's degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His early career included work for Lowrance Electronics and King Radio Corporation, and in the early 1980s he worked for Allied Signal. In 1989 he and his partner Kao founded Garmin to make navigation devices for aviation and boating that use the Global Positioning System; the first office was two folding chairs and a card table. Some United States servicemen used Garmin units in the first Gulf War even though the company never held a military contract, and the technology was later extended to road navigation across the United States. Burrell gave to the Indian Creek Community Church in Olathe, Kansas, was a billionaire by 2016, and died of complications of Parkinson's disease.