Radio age research, manufacturing, communications, broadcasting, television (1941)

ratories have played their part in this phenomenal story. Only in the United States could such a phenom- enal development proceed so rapidly and result in such phenomenal pro- duction," said Admiral Bowen. "The greatest tribute is due the many who worked for so long: in silence in so many laboratories to make it possible that the results of this development could be utilized in time to obtain a definite military advantage over our enemies." Does the enemy know about radar? The fundamental jirinciple is no secret. In fact, a main objec- tive of one of the first Commando raids along the French coast on February 27, 1942, was to capture intact the equipment of a radar sta- tion at Bruneval, north of Havre— the mission was successful. Aiming to cripple one of Ger- many's key defense weapons against land invasion and against Allied air attacks, RAF 4-motored Lancaster bombers on June 21, 1943, made a heavy raid on the radio-radar fac- tory in Friedrichshafen with 500- pound bomb hits on all main build- ings. It has since been revealed that for many years America has been at the forefront of radar de- velopment, but because the war struck Britain first, it was there that this new aerial watchdog re- ceived its baptism of fire. Radar was rushed into action, and the British are rightly praised for hav- ing done a magnificent job in quickly applying this great weapon to in-event the Luftwaffe from striking a knockout blow. Nazi fighter bombers have tried in vain to sneak by the radar patrols to reach England by flying low, skim- ming the water in hopes that the beams might be sweeping the skies overhead and therefore miss them. Lord Beaverbrook, Minister of State, in a broadcast appeal for volunteers to man the radio locators in England, said: "It is the radio that destroys the enemy in the darkness, that seeks him out through the clouds. It is the radio that sends the avenging fighter to the place where he will meet the lurking enemy and bring him to destruction. . . ." Radar, as is often the case with new scientific developments, sounds mysterious and complex. Yet there is a simple explanation of its prin- ciple that reveals how its magic is performed. A simple illustration is found in the echo. The boy, who yoo-hoos at a cliff and hears the echo, is in effect il- lustrating the radar principle. The sound strikes an object and is re- flected. Radio also has echoes. But, of course, radio travels much faster than sound; it travels at the speed of light, 186,000 miles a second. Knowing the speed of sound and light, also the time elapsed before the echo is heard, distance can be measured. For instance, knowing the velocity of the radio wave, and by recording the time required for the echo to come back, the distance to the object that reflected the sig- nal can be determined. The speed of the radio waves, however, is so great that it is only by the development of modern elec- tronic devices that this measure- ment has been made possible. For instance, the time required for a radio wave to travel to an object 50 feet away and back again is only one ten-millionth of a second, yet radar can measure it. The wonder of it is that out of the electromagnetic power "search- lighted" into space, the infinitesi- mal bit that may be reflected from an airplane—a mere speck in the sky—can be detected as an echo. It bespeaks high tribute to the radio tube designers who have cre- ated the means of projecting pow- erful beams into the sky. And at the same time they have been able to produce receiving tubes of suffi- cient sensitivity to record the re- flection of a plane as it flies through the invisible beam. Radar, an important milestone in the evolution of I'adio, is no over- night development. Years of ex- ploration of the ether—pioneering that opened up the ultra-short wave spectrum—are behind it, as well as research and engineering in radio circuits, special electron tubes, and the application of electronic tech- niques. Fortunately, science was ready when the frantic call went out for a device to combat the war plane. Radar came to the rescue. Twenty-five years of peacetime scientific developments since 1918 have been marshalled into service to help win the Second World War. Veteran sailors marveled at the radio direction-finder of World War I. However, the old type of direc- tion-finding has always required that the ship or plane to be located had to be transmitting a radio sig- nal. Through the development of radar, vessels or aircraft can be found whether or not they are emit- ting radio signals. In the new form of radar direction-finding, position and distance may be determined without the cooperation of the ob- ject, the location of which is being determined. Great has been the advance in this art of radio since the radio compass won fame at the Battle of •Jutland, and aboard the NC-trans- atlantic flying boats on their his- toric hop across the sea in 1919. Radar is new magic. In recent years there have been a number of radio scientists and engineers whose work has been di- rectly concerned with putting radar together and in the development of components that made it practical. The basic researches of Dr. A. Hoyt Taylor, Leo C. Young, L. A. Hy- land, Robert M. Page, Louis A. Gebhard, and M. H. Schrenk of the •^ '■^'"■:-i^>?jri^ '*i:^is