Editing Dynamic positioning (section)

==History==
Dynamic positioning began in the 1960s for [[offshore drilling]]. With drilling moving into ever deeper waters, [[Jack-up]] barges could not be used any more, and anchoring in deep water was not economical.

As part of [[Project Mohole]], in 1961 the drillship [[CUSS I|''Cuss 1'']] was fitted with four steerable propellers. The Mohole project was attempting to drill to the [[Mohorovičić discontinuity|Moho]], which required a solution for deep water drilling. It was possible to keep the ship in position above a well off [[La Jolla]], California, at a depth of 948 meters.

After this, off the coast of [[Guadalupe Island|Guadalupe]], Mexico, five holes were drilled, the deepest at 183&nbsp;m (601&nbsp;ft) below the sea floor in 3,500 m (11,700&nbsp;ft) of water, while maintaining a position within a radius of 180 meters. The ship's position was determined by radar ranging to buoys and sonar ranging from subsea beacons.

Whereas the ''Cuss 1'' was kept in position manually, later in the same year [[Shell Oil Company|Shell]] launched the drilling ship ''Eureka'' that had an analogue control system interfaced with a taut wire, making it the first true DP ship.<ref name=Intro />

While the first DP ships had analogue controllers and lacked redundancy, since then vast improvements have been made. Besides that, DP nowadays is not only used in the oil industry, but also on various other types of ships. In addition, DP is not limited to maintaining a fixed position any more. One of the possibilities is sailing an exact track, useful for [[Cable layer|cablelay]], pipelay, survey and other tasks.