The Ring and Its GPS Tracker
 

In ROTK, Frodo puts on the Ring at the Sammath Naur, and claims it for his own.

Immediately Sauron is aware of him and knows exactly where he is. Somehow he feels / hears the claim (the Ring is a "telephone" of sorts; possessing his own will and part of his being it is always connected to Sauron).

Now, it could possibly be said that Gollum had claimed the Ring long before, calling it "mine" and "My Precious", and so forth. Gollum had also worn the Ring very many times during his keeping of it, while he was under the Misty Mountains and Sauron the Necromancer was gathering his strength in Mirkwood just across the Anduin.

So, why wasn't Sauron aware of Gollum the way he was later aware of Frodo? Yes, the Ring was at the apex of its power at Mt. Doom, but still: how did Sauron miss Gollum having it?

It would seem that Gollum stopped possessing it about the time Sauron was coming back to power. With a weakened Sauron and the ring not in Mordor it would seem likely that it would not be strong enough to proclaim itself. Plus Gollum wasn't wearing it often if ever near the end.

I wondered about that morm. However, the Tale of Years states that in TA 1050:

Then, in 2470:

So that's 1,420 years of rebuilding from Sauron.

In 2845 Sauron was aware enough to know who had the last of the Seven, at least, and was powerful enough to bring Thráin II to Dol Guldur to obtain it.

In 2941 Bilbo found the Ring, and only 10 years later, in 2951:

So there's a 10 year gap between Gollum losing the Ring and Sauron becoming confident enough to abandon secrecy and proclaim to all that he was back.

Now there were 96 years from the time Sauron figured out who had one of the Seven, to the time Gollum lost The One, and he'd been using it pretty regularly, at least to get food. It just seems to me that if Sauron could have had the awareness he obviously had of Thráin's ring, and the ability to get it from him, he should have had some inkling at least that The One still existed, and had not been destroyed.

If I remember correctly, and hopefully this is not just the movies, but I don't believe Sauron ever believed the ring would be destroyed. So he always knew it was whole and believed it unfound; Your question is pertinent however and it would seem that perhaps the ring did not send a signal sufficiently strong for him to locate it.

It's perhaps worth noting that the Ring gives power according to the stature of the holder. Maybe it "gives off electromagnetic waves" in the same proportion. All that Gollum really cares for - except for the Ring - is food. The Ring is a means to get it. Frodo, on the other hand, is quite an Elvish hobbit. He not only knows the Ring's power and history, but he's learned in Elves lore to a certain extent. I'd say his stature is "higher" that Gollum's.

When Sam put on the Ring, it didn't have the same immediate effect as when Frodo put it on. So I can take from this that the Ring's electromagnetism only counts for book-lore, or whatever it is that Frodo has that Sam doesn't.

I've always been under the impression that Sauron's immediate awareness had entirely to do with Frodo's proximity to Mt. Doom and the fires where the Ring was forged. Indeed, I've always assumed that it was the mere act of putting the Ring on while standing before those fires that alerted Sauron. It's clear that the Ring's power becomes stronger and stronger as Frodo approaches the mountain, and it seems to me that this effect is sufficient to explain its maker's heightened awareness.

I think that there is a big diference between claiming the ring to be yours and the way Frodo claimed it on Mount Doom: Gollum was never ware of what the Ring was when he wore it, neither was Bilbo. Frodo and Sam were aware of the possibilities the Ring would give: Comand over all the other ring beares including Sauron, if you could handle the Ring right (which neither could, but which the Ring made them belive they could).

Now what Frodo did was claiming that he considered himself the master of the Ring not only the bearer. He now at long last was ready to try what Boromir had suggested all that time: Use the Ring against Sauron. He would have lost that fight, but he put that challange up.

Respectfuly
Findegil

What about putting it on on Amon Hen?

Sauron was aware of somebody wearing the ring but he did not know where immediately unlike when worn in Mount Doom. This would seem to support what Aiwendil said.

Re: Gollum, I seem to remember someone (Gandalf, maybe, in The Shadow of the Past?) saying that it had been a long time since Gollum wore the Ring. In the dark under the Mountains, it wasn't needed. I may very well be wrong, though.

That's true as far as I remember. However, we know from TH that Gollum wore it shortly before Bilbo's comming.

Gandalf did indeed say that to Frodo.

In The Hobbit though, it says:

Riddles In the Dark

Perhaps Gandalf was only guessing about Gollum's use of the Ring. After all it doesn't seem on the face of it that he would have worn it in the caves.

x/d with G55

I think part of the answer is given in RoTK, "The Tower of Cirith Ungol" as Sam crosses the summit of the pass (removing the Ring from his finger as he does so)As far as Amon Hen, that was the Numenorean's "Seat of Seeing". The seat, coupled with the Ring, had already combined to let Frodo's gaze carry even to Barad Dur.

While we don't know the specifics of "how" that worked, the fact that it "DID" work, opens the possibility that the combination also allowed Sauron to "look" back. In the event, that took time and Frodo managed to remove the Ring before Sauron's back-trace could be completed.

If we want to go with an overly simplistic GPS analogy, there are a number of possible reasons for Sauron not noticing it until Mt. Doom.

1.) Frodo was simply a stronger power source than Gollum (as already mentioned by Galadriel55).

2.) Sauron's ability to pick up a transmission was limited in range to something transmitting in Mordor (not unlike rabbit ears on a television...)

3.) Mt. Doom's innate connection to the Ring gave it a signal boost that was otherwise unknown.

Also, I think it's worth noting that while Sauron first rose again after his defeat at Elendil and Gil-galad's hands in 1050 when the "shadow fell on Greenwood," he was probably still growing in power over the course of the Millennium. Actually, we know he was, at least in terms of military might, but I think it clearly goes beyond military might. Sauron's identity as the Necromancer was a secret until the very end of his time in Dol Guldur, and I think that Sauron only returned to Mordor and declared himself openly when he did because he finally felt strong enough to do so. Prior to that point, while I imagine he would have known right away if someone had destroyed the Ring (the "pop" as his existence was reduced to a shadow that would never have the time to grow back to a solid form would have almost certainly given it away), it's possible he wouldn't have had the ability sense more than the fact that the Ring was still out there.

Also, the connection to Mt. Doom should not be underemphasized either. This was the place of the Ring's forging and the very fact that it could only be destroyed there indicates the strong connection between the two. Frodo's claim of the Ring there is different in kind from Gollum's claim on the Ring and from Sam's use of the Ring walking into Mordor simply because of the location. What is more, Frodo is clearly acting in a ritualistic way: somewhere, deep down in the Hobbit who no longer has the will to fight the Ring, he knows the significance of the location. Whereas Gollum and Sam (and Bilbo and Frodo-priorly) certainly used the Ring and even claimed it as their own, Frodo-at-Mt.Doom is the first to be thinking of the true Master of the Ring as they do so. The other claims on the Ring were theft, perhaps, but Frodo's Mt. Doom claim was a challenge. A challenge, admittedly, that a Hobbit could possibly hope to win, but a challenge nonetheless.

In many respects, Frodo's claim of the Ring at Mt. Doom is probably what Sauron was expecting from Aragorn, after he wrenched control of the palantír away from him--a challenge that Aragorn won. Even if he was feeling "twinges" from the Ring, Sauron had no reason to be concerned about them, because he was confident he knew where the Ring was--well away from Mordor. In other words, until Frodo challenged him for real at Mt. Doom, there was nothing about his "Ring GPS" that would actually have given away the Ring's location.

Thus suggesting, perhaps, that "Ring GPS" is less accurate an analogy than I would have said at the beginning of this post.

Maybe because ring was so deep underground, it's signal was "damped" or "shaded" in some way, like radio signal in tunnels...

Great topic, I can't believed I missed this one so far!

Some useful quotations, first Sam using the Ring on the outskirts of Mordor:

and then Frodo using it on Amon Hen:


I don't have any good explanation, I'll have to sleep on it for now.




PS: whilst googling for ideas I stumbled upon this somewhat related and definitely very interesting thread: http://forum.barrowdowns.com/archive...p?t-15558.html
I think that particular thread is worth re-visiting!

Interesting topic! :) Gollum claimed the Ring many times calling it *mine*. But he did so as if he were a "companion" of it, and did not try to "master" it. Gollum's claiming was more like an addiction instead of a powerful challenge. And I agree with those who said Frodo challenged Sauron by claiming the Ring. It was a sort of challenge as if he had challenged Sauron's kingship(?) and his powers, unlike Gollum who simply possessed it, and used it for mischievous deeds. Ring contained a big part of Sauron; when Gollum had the Ring, both Sauron and his part, Ring that is, were weak. We are not told if Sauron never noticed this (Gollum), are we? Perhaps he did but was too weak to take an action. While in The Cracks of Doom, Ring and its Master were at their strongest. Frodo from the naive, simple Hobbit had become a powerful spirit, and he challenged Sauron to become the Lord of the Rings by saying, "The Ring is mine."