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

marines wliich I'iiu.sed United States transports to be routed from IJrest to avoid attack. One of the knottiest radio i)rob- lems taken on by the Navy in the First World War was the creation of apparatus suitable for use in aircraft. Ignition interference which prevented reception of all but the clearest sifrnals had to be overcome. Yet the weight had to be light enough to fly in the little I)lanes of 1917 and 1918. It is un- derstandable why the Navy was proud to be able to announce thai it had fitted seventy-five planes with spark type transmitters and vacuum tube receivers before the Armistice was signed. Our Army entered the war with field radio eiiuii^ment much the same as we had had in 1914. In the meantime, France and England had profited by three years of in- tensive development, having real- ized through bittei- experience that Army radio had to be changed greatly to meet the demands of ti'ench combat in which service dis- tances were short and light weight was a tremendous asset. So our Army ad()])ted the radio eciuipment of the French Army, but created a research jirogram of its own. A laboratory and field test section was set up by the A.E.F. in France, and a research bureau w^as estab- lished at Camp Vail, N. J., supple- mented by the Signal Corps Lab- oratory and Bureau of Standards in Washington. The basis for the amazing ex- liansion of American radio's uses in the Second World War began to be laid very soon after the Armis- tice of 1918. The Fir.st World War had proved what could be accom- plished by directed research and the adjustment of claims and coun- ter-claims of rival organizations, each holding essential patents and none capable of building a complete i-adio communication system with- out the others. To end this dead- lock, the Radio Corporation of .America was formed, with the sym- pathetic cooperation of our Gov- ernment. Other strong competitive companies came later. The years between the wars developed radio lommunication and electronics to a i)oint which changed the daily life of the nation. No more striking demonstration <d' radio's elticiency and versatility iduld be imagined than the u.ses to \\hich it now is being put on our lighting fronts and all the embat- tled seven seas. Much of the storv 1 . S. SAILOR "pipes" ORDERS THROUGH TRANSMITTER OF RCA INTERIOR COMMU- NICATIONS EQUIPMENT USED ON BATTLE- SHIPS AND AIRCRAFT CARRIERS. rWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, THE CU.MBER- SOME RIG ON THIS BIPLANE'S TOP WING WAS IIEVELOPED AS A RADIO DIRECTION FINDING LOOP ANTENNA. BELOW: IN THIS WAR. SOLDIERS MAIN- TAIN I.NSTANTANEOUS VOICE COMMUNI- CATION WITH FIELD COMMANDERS BY .MEANS OF THE "WALKIE-TALKIE." cannot yet be told, for reasons of military security. American radio has been in the war from the first, as an eager vol- unteer. The production of its de- vice.s—all for the armed services— now totals $250,000,000 a month in I he United States, by the latest available reports. The demand on the radio indus- try for millions of electron tubes of all sizes, great numbers of transmit- ters, receivers, antennas and other essential equipment can be realized (inly when we think of the size of our 7,000,000-man Army and two- ocean Navy. They are fighting what might almost be called a "ra- dio war," because the science of radio-electronics is playing such a lonsiiicuous part for victory. The part which radio, in all its various phases, is taking in the present war, will bring great ad- vances in radio in the post-war era. The intensified research and the experience now being gained under the exacting conditions of life and death struggle will be turned to the uses of peace. We have reason to I'xpect a forward surge in radio- electronics when this war ends that will be comparable to the great strides of radio-electronics after the First World War. [4 RADIO AGE],