Radar
Radar (the US-originated name, an acronym for 'radio detection and ranging') is a system which uses reflections of electro-magnetic energy to detect the presence, and the location, of objects (airplanes, ships, etc). Although several people had speculated about it through the early 1900's, it was the British, in the late 1930's, who produced the first effective integrated radar-based defense system - the Chain Home system, which was intended to help defend Britain from air attack, and which played a significant role in the seminally important Battle of Britain. (The Germans, and others, were not far behind, in unit engineering, but the British had their integrated overall system up first.)
Radar has produced almost countless technical spinoffs (including two Nobel Prizes in physics), perhaps the best-known of which is the humble microwave oven. The war-time work on radar had an interesting (and wholly accidental) cross-fertilization to early computer work, especially in Britain; it produced a large group of people who were very familiar at working with high-speed pulsed circuits.
Further reading
Development history
- Louis Brown, A Radar History of World War II: Technical and Military Imperatives, Institute of Physics, Bristol, 1999 - a voluminous and detailed work; ends with an informed, perceptive and incisive evaluation
- Henry E. Guerlac, RADAR in World War II, Tomash, 1987
- David Pritchard, The Radar War: Germany's Pioneering Achievement 1904-45, Patrick Stephens, Wellingborough, 1989
- Gordon K. Kinsey, A. F. Wilkins, Orfordness: Secret Site, Terence Dalton, Lavenham, 1981- first-person history of the start of the effort
- Gordon K. Kinsey, Bawdsey: Birth of the Beam, Terence Dalton, Lavenham, 1983
- S. S. Swords, Technical history of the beginnings of RADAR, Institution of Electrical Engineers, London, 1986 - fairly technical
- E. B. Callick, Metres to Microwaves: British Development of Active Components for Radar Systems, 1937 to 1944, Institution of Engineering and Technology, London, 1990 - extremely technical
- Robert Watson-Watt, The Pulse of Radar, Dial, New York, 1959
- A. P. Rowe, One Story of Radar, Cambridge University, Cambridge, 1948
- E. G. Bowen, Radar Days, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1987
- R. Hanbury Brown, Boffin: A Personal Story of the Early Days of Radar, Radio Astronomy and Quantum Optics, Adam Hilger
- Bernard Lovell, Echoes of War: The Story of H2S Radar, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1991
- Jennet Conant, Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2003
- Jim Brown, Radar: How It All Began, Janus, London, 1996 - interesting view 'from the trenches'
Use history
- Alfred Price, Instruments of Darkness: The History of Electronic Warfare, 1939-1945, Peninsula, Los Altos, 1987
- Martin Streetly, Confound and Destroy: 100 Group and The Bomber Support Campaign, Macdonald and James, London, 1978
- Martin W Bowman, Tom Cushing, Confounding the Reich: The Operational History of 100 Group (Bomber Support) RAF, Patrick Stephens, Sparkford, 1996
- Jack Nissen, Winning the Radar War St. Martin's, New York, 1989 - more 'from the trenches'
- Damien Lewis, Churchill's Shadow Raiders: The Race to Develop Radar, WWII's Invisible Secret Weapon, Citadel, New York, 2020 - more focused on intelligence
- Robert Buderi, The Invention That Changed the World: How a Small Group of Radar Pioneers Won the Second World War and Launched a Technological Revolution, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1996 - also covers some of the technologies downstream from radar
