Talk:Radar
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UK's vs US' contributions
There was a claim on the Manhattan Project page that radar was invented at MIT. I thought it was at least partly a British invention. Anybody got more details? --Robert Merkel
- The key individual role (most such inventions are collaborative even if those responsible for the individual contributions never met each other) is credited to Robert Watson-Watt (1892-1973) of Brechin, Angus, Scotland. Moving from the Royal Aircraft Factory (Farnborough, Hampshire) to the Radio Research Station (later part of the National Physical Laboratory) in Slough, (then in Buckinghamshire, but now now part of Berkshire) and then to a new NPL site at Teddington (then in Middlesex, but now in Surrey), he was asked by the Air Ministry to investigate a counterpart to an alleged German aircraft-killing "death ray".
- Concluding that the power needed made it impractical to fry bombers out of the sky, instead on 26 February 1935 he demonstrated the future radar by using the BBC's Daventry (Northamptonshire) short-wave radio transmitter and a receiver and oscilloscpe (housed in a former ambulance in a field seven miles away) to detect a Handley Page Heyford bomber at 27 km. Subsequently head of the Bawdsey research station in Felixstowe (Suffolk), Watson-Watt helped to develop the ring of radar stations established in 1938. He was knighted in 1942.
- MIT's role came shortly afterward (1938-1940), developing in collaboration with Canadian researchers a fighter-borne system (the first British airborne experiment had been in September 1937, but still needed development). David Parker
MIT Rad Lab & I. I. Rabi
The following was floating around on the page, probably debris from an incomplete edit. Someone who knows this stuff could probably figure out where it belongs:
... especially at the Radiation Lab at MIT (I. I. Rabi) and played an important role in the outcome of the war.
--Ortolan88 12:56 Jul 25, 2002 (PDT)
- It's from an old version, and has been replaced by a lengthy section of expanded text now. --Anonymous No.I
General vs military radar
It seems useful to me to split this entry in two: one radar in general, and the other more focused on the military history side of it. I'm thinking of the link I'm about to make in an explicitly military context and seeing an article that doesn't deal with the stuff that it's appropriate to link to until you scroll quite a way down. And it's easy enough to imagine the contrary example, where you want to link to radar from an entry on a completely non-military area - microwave ovens or car safety devices or astronomomy, say. What do people think? Tannin 09:26 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC)
- On the history section: it's a very good history of British and German developments, but US work deserves more mention, esp the Rad Lab stuff. Also, Watson-Watt gets too much prominence at present: he played an important role in the development of British radar, and an even more important role in the getting-to-say-who-invented-it-afterwards department, to the exclusion of several others. There is an excellent and fairly recent American history of the Rad Lab that covers this in detail. I have it here somewhere, just can't remember the title at the moment. Tannin 11:16 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC)
- Found it! Added it to main article. Tannin
French early contributions
I should verify but according to some sources the French engineers of the CFS had active research on the radar before ww II, they gave their technology to the British in 1939. Ericd
There a PD article at http://www.vectorsite.net/ttwiz1.html you can cut and paste as you want. Ericd
here is a source about French researchs http://sjdangle.free.fr/societe/ponte.htm Ericd 12:10 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC)
Chain home; RDF1 book; WWII Proximity fuse
One of the big achievements of the British WWII radar system was in developing the handling of the information from the radar stations. They started work on this before the system was working fully. Chain Home might have been primitive in many ways but was in use right through WWII and was providing valuable information on V2 launches towards the end of the war.
I quite agree that Robert Budari's book on the Rad Lab gives a good overall picture of radar in WWII. The best book that I have found on the British ground based radar system is ...
RDF1 by Michael Bragg Published by Hawkhead Publishing ISBN 0953154408 [1] (http://www.net-magic.net/users/w4fok/Radar_Page.htm)
It follows the story in chronological order.
By the way, the WWII Proximity Fuse was not a true radar (i.e. pulse) device. It used a continuous carrier and the doppler effect to detect its proximity to an aircraft or the ground.
British (+German?) bias?
The article as it is written is very biased to British (and some German) radar work. As discussed in this article, technological advances seem to end about 1950. This simply isn't true.
When we look at the history, we certainly need to include in the early years - 1901 (I think) - Tesla delivers a paper before the Institution of Radio Engineers proposing, for the first time, radar. Maxwell developed the theory, Hertz was the first to show reflections of radio waves at UHF, and Tesla was the first to propose radar. The telemobiloscope of Hulsmeyer is not properly mentioned, and the shortcomings of the telemobiloscope that caused its economic and technical failure are not discussed. It is surely worthy of note that there were no real amplifiers until deForrest developed them and no good power sources for microwaves. The development of the first pulsed radar at the Naval Research Labs in 1924 to measure the height of the ionosphere is also quite worthy of note.
Developments in the early 1930s were not only done in Britain and Germany. The SCR-270 was in place and detected the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. US PBY Catalina aircraft detected the Bismarck for the British fleet, and it was this detection that allowed the sinking of the Bismarck. The Bismarck itself had an impressive targeting radar. By the early 1930s, there were excellent researchers in the United States, France, Italy, Russia, Britain, and Germany all working on radar. All achieved impressive results. The development of the SCR-584, which was the first modern anti-aircraft radar, in 1943, revolutionized aerial attacks. The SCR-584 at Anzio had, it is reported, a 70% probability of kill, eliminating German air attacks.
The airborne ground mapping radars, which reached their WWII height with the H2S and the H2X, should also be a part of this history. This is true not just because they were the first radars to show ground maps or because of their effectiveness, but because the whole idea of ground mapping from air or space is essentially overlooked in the article. The beginnings of ECM and ESM are also a critical development for radar.
After World War II, technology did not stop. Doppler radars came about in the 1960s, medium PRF in the 1970s, and the electronically scanned antenna mostly in the 1980s, a trend still going on today. Ground penetrating radars are another specialty area in which there has been considerable development. Vehicle navigation and anti-collision radars are worth a mention in the article. These are getting to be a big market. There are many CW radars in this subarea, and they do measure range with FM.
Well, that's just a few items. I would suggest that someone develop a credible outline for radar, then start fleshing it out. The current article looks like it was written by someone who does not understand the technical material, but has read a British history on the subject.
--Anonymous No.II
- I agree with the previous post. I did some research on radar history, which has been documented in http://ghj-associates.co.uk/radar_history.html. To summerize my research, radar technology started with Karl Ferdinand Braun around 1897 when he invented oscilloscope tube and improved range of wireless. Marconi tried to steal Braun's patent and in the end Nobel prize for inventing wireless was awarded to both of them. In 1904 Christian Hulsmeyer filed a patent for radar. In 1929 German Navy, Reichsmarine started work on what we know today as sonar. This effort lead to the first magnetron build by Philips and establishing of GEMA, Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische und Mechanische a firm dedicated to radar research.
- Dr. Hans Eric Hollmann, who worked on radar in Telefunken, filed some 300 patents on his work. All of Telefunken radar patents were filed in United States also, so any american radar developments were copies of Dr. Hans Eric Hollmann patents. In 1935 first radar was installed on the german ship "Welle". "Home Chain", which british started in 1937 operated on 27 MHz and compared to german radars operating at 125 MHz was a primitive device. In 1937 to 1938 germans installed hundreds of Freya radars as german early warning radar system with the range of between 60 to 120 km. In 1938 a new naval radar system instlaled on the battleship Admiral Graf Spee with a range of 11 miles, which operated on 375 MHz. During the war germany developed Wuerzburg radar to guide night fighters to the british bombers. This and many other radar developments started a jamming war between radar engineers on both sides of English Channel.
- British transferred all their radar knowledge to americans in 1940, which started american efforts to build a vaiable radar in what was called "RadLab". "RadLab" designed all american radar devices and at the height of its operation employed 4000 people. I could not establish when the first american radar was produced but from my research it looks like 1941 would be the date. Americans could have purchased some radars from Telefunken in 1939 or even in 1940, since trade between war time germany and the rest of the world was vey active, but again I could not find any proof of that. Radars were also installed on polish bombers in 1939, most likely copies of german radars. From Polish Air Force radar technology most likely traveled to Russians, so it is prudent to assume that both Poles and Russians had german radar designs in 1939. From the first sonar development in German Navy radar was hidden behind a wall of military secresy and even today it is difficult to piece together the real order of events.
- For the lack of proof of several important dates I do not feel competent to rewrite anglocentered propaganda of radar history page in Wikipedia, but it would be nice to have somebody with a better knowledge of the subject to present a true story of this fascinating device.
- --Anonymous No.III
- Seriously, add or edit a paragraph. It's easy to edit the Wiki one paragraph at a time. You've presented a good bit of information here, why not put SOME of that into the REAL page instead of the talk page. Rick Boatright 19:21, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Frequency range(s) wanted
In the Frequency section, in addition to listings of a couple of 'bad' frequencies/frequency ranges, I would very much like to see an overview of the frequency range(s) used in all kinds of radar applications. That would make the article much more accessible and usable in a reference setting, I think. --Wernher 00:57, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Scientific use of Radar
I'd like to see (or add) a section or a separate page on some of the current scientific uses for radar, particularly in my field of atmospheric/ionospheric research. In the ionosphere#Geophysics entry there is a link to Project HAARP, but there is much more to tell. The Arecibo Observatory was built to be a radar, a fact not obvious from the entry, and there is a handful of ionospheric incoherent scatter radars around the world. In addition, there is a large number of ionosondes and digisondes for automated ionospheric monitoring, and VHF meteor radars and coherent scatter radars for upper atmospheric research, as well as the SuperDARN radar chain of which the UK CUTLASS radar is just one pair of stations.
There is also the fascinating topic of passive radar, which probably deserves a section or page of its own.
I have read the various FAQs and tutorials for contributing to the 'pedia, and I'll be willing to contribute to these sections, if this is of interest. I'd appreciate opinions on structure, though. I.e., add a section or create separate page on scientific radar instruments, etc. Also, should I create an account before starting on such contributions?
--Tom Grydeland Tom.Grydeland@phys.uit.no
- Thanks for your offer to contribute, Tom. I think we would all welcome your help. Here are my suggestions, which are by no means authoritative.
- Get yourself a user account on Wikipedia (see Special:UserLogin). This is not obligatory, and some contributors manage fine without one, but it tends to encourage other users take you more seriously. You can advertise your email address, but many Wikipedians won't use it, preferring to keep all communications on the Wikipedia record.
- Add a section to Radar summarising the scientific uses, and then, if you feel like going into more detail, add more articles on the more specialised topics. Personally, I feel that lots of medium-sized articles on the specific areas you mentioned, such as Cutlass, would be more interesting and easier to navigate than a huge amorphous article on "scientific radar", but others might disagree.
- Beware of creating articles with ambiguous titles, such as "Cutlass". The convention here is to describe the most common sense of the term (i.e. the knife) in the article of that name, but to add a note at the top or bottom saying "See Cutlass (radar) for the scientific radar system."
- Prepare yourself for lots of discussions and perhaps even arguments with other contributors, some better informed than others.
Best wishes, -- Heron 17:32, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)
How to shorten the article since it's well above the 32k limit?
I wanted to make a small change but refrained due to the warning that it's already 38k and should be shortened or split up. Are there any ideas on how to do that? None looked obvious to me, but splitting it up seems prefereable to just shortening it, since all the information looks to be well worth keeping. Maybe split off the frequency bands since that is a very specialized thing that is probably not of interest to most readers, or condense the history section and move the contents to a radar history article? And does this Talk page count against the limit (probably not since it is a separate page, but just verifying)? Spalding 12:31, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)
- The 32k limit is a technical thing to work around a bug in some older browsers. If you want to make a small change in the short term, just go ahead. If the article is already 38k, then you won't make the problem any worse by expanding it to 39k. In the longer term, I would agree with splitting off the history section, although I would leave a single-paragraph summary here to satisfy the casual reader. Finally, the Talk page doesn't count towards the 32k. Thanks for taking the trouble to ask. --Heron 12:56, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Spun lots material out to more appropiate seperate pages. Dan100 13:14, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)
Radar Intrusion Detection Devices
I would like to see more about the use of radar as intrusion detection devices. I have been researching them as I am a Security Consultant and the literature that is out there is either slim or very old and out-dated. I have been trying to find the frequency range of a paticular device that is used as a short range, low crawl detector. It is a Doppler short-beam radar. The specs do not give a frequency, they give a range of 32 feet and a delay of .5 to 2 seconds. I'm a security specialist, not an engineer.
If I happened to have missed this within the pages of this article, forgive me. If not, please guide me....
ALWAYS LEARNING
i don't see the small square
"Several types of radars on the frigate Duquesne, notably a navigation radar (small square) and the big radome which protects the DRBI 23 air sentry radar." - Omegatron 17:14, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)
As the picture became 'missing', I've removed it. Dan100 13:18, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)
Radar versus RADAR
Shouldn't we change the title of this page from "Radar" to "RADAR" since RADAR is an acronym?--P Todd 04:35, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There appear to be planty of examples of acronyms written in lower case documented in Wikipedia. --SC 20:15, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Request for references
Hi, I am working to encourage implementation of the goals of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Part of that is to make sure articles cite their sources. This is particularly important for featured articles, since they are a prominent part of Wikipedia. Further reading is not the same thing as proper references. Further reading could list works about the topic that were not ever consulted by the page authors. If some of the works listed in the further reading section were used to add or check material in the article, please list them in a references section instead. The Fact and Reference Check Project has more information. Thank you, and please leave me a message (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Taxman&action=edit§ion=new) when a few references have been added to the article. - Taxman 19:23, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
K band useless?
In the article it says that K-band is useless because of its absorbtion by water vapor. When I went into my friend's car, which has a radar detector, it has a feature that allows the detection of radar detectors in the K-band. I know my knowledge is limited, but nowhere in the article does it mention police radar guns, and these should be placed somewhere in the article.
History
Shouldn't there be at least a short section on the history of radar in this article? I realize there is a seperate article, but it is in dreadful shape, would be nice to see a crisp paragraph or two outlining the history.