About

David Brinkman is the current Chair of the Greater Piedmont Chapter of the Explorers Club. The Explorers Club is an international multidisciplinary professional society dedicated to the advancement of field research and the ideal that it is vital to preserve the instinct to explore. Since its inception in 1904, the Club has served as a meeting point and unifying force for explorers and scientists worldwide. Our members are the first to the North Pole, the South Pole, summit of Mount Everest, and the surface of the moon.

David Brinkman was born in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina but has spent most of his life in Columbia, SC. He graduated from Irmo High School and the University of South Carolina with a B.S. in Computer and Electrical Engineering. For over 25 years, he has worked as a software engineer for NCR, AT&T, and Intel Corporations.

David never had an interest in history until 1997 when, after losing his father, he began a labor of love to represent and honor his father's military service in his dad's WWII reunion group. It was through this that David caught the history bug. In 2005, the discovery of an old bridge abutment in his new backyard on the Broad River started a series of local history projects from Columbia to Charleston.

Exploration Work:
 
* Extensive research of Columbia's River history (1700's to early 1900's):http://dobrinkman.net/bridge
                               
* Specialized work with computer overlays of old surveys and maps onto today's
   maps (This work helped: Find the lost Broad River Confederate Bridge and
   General Sherman's pontoon crossing site; Find the site of Jacob Geiger's Mill on the
   Congaree river; Verify the location of Friday's Ferry (at Granby) with that of
   remains found in 2007; Find the location of the 1748 Fort Congaree in 2013.
                               
* GPS mapping and photography of hundreds of South Carolina Ferry and Bridge sites.
 
* Creation of Smartphone GPS enabled tours for Android and iPhone smartphones (You do the
   walking and your phone does the talking): http://historysoft.com :
 
        Phone apps created:
          -Columbia's Three Rivers History Tour (150 points of interest over 15 miles).
          -Midlands' Historical Markers App (140 markers).
          -Riverbanks Zoo Tour App (70 points of interest including Saluda Mill Ruins).
          -Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum App: The first smartphone
             museum app that has automatic detection of a person's location in a museum.
          -Charleston 3D Tour App (350 markers and over 400 stereoscopic images of
             Charleston from the Civil War and today.
          -Clarendon County Tour App featuring the Swamp Fox Murals
                                               
* Finding Granby project: Team leader over a Research and Archaeological project to
   find the remains of the old South Carolina town of Granby. The dig has produced over
  8000 artifacts from the Granby period.
                              
Awards:

              2009: The Historic Columbia Foundation's Helen Kohn Hennig Award
                 for Historic Preservation to David Brinkman for the PBS History Detectives
                 "Civil War Bridge" nationally television episode.
               
              2011: Columbia, SC Chamber of Commerce Pillar Award finalist: Pillar of                              
                 Technology in the Arts for David Brinkman's South Carolina Confederate 
                 Relic Room and Military Museum Smartphone Application which uses 
                 phone sensors to determine a visitor's position in the museum. 

Below: David Brinkman digging Granby