On Nov 22, 2018, at 11:58 AM, Jeff Kruth via Groups.Io <kmec@...> wrote:
Hi Paul!
Look them up, there are 28 volumes. They are GREAT! I finally bought a complete set in great condition for 100.00 off a museum
Paul,
Thanks for your comments on the Rad Lab and its work.
The introduction to (at least) one volume tells that “After the cessation of hostilities, many of the scientists and staff “agreed to stay on to document the work” and did so in about 6 to 12 months!
In one set of books, we gave to the world the secrets of how to build a radar! The Magic of Microwaves explained!!
It seems to me that much of the content would have been classified, especially during the war. I wonder if there was a wholesale classification-release program in effect.
...You can look at Hewlett Packard waveguide instrumentation from the 1950-1990 time frame and see that it is directly derived from the Rad Lad designs with HP niceties added!
This phenomenon is parallel to the amateur radio gadgets offered commercially that were taken quite directly from the RCA Hints
and GE Ham News
publications. Two examples are the Millan 92101 receiver preamplifier and the B&W LPA-1 linear.
In a related happening (briefly), General Radio mostly avoided making military-specific equipment. One exception perhaps is the APR-1 and APR-4 ECM receivers. They were developed from a GR instrument meant as a detector/receiver for VHF/UHF/Microwave work, the P-540 receiver. See GR Experimenter March 1947 for further information.
Direct link:
At least go to the KO4BB website and download the PDF’s.
I should download the whole lot as a project. After all, my computer local backup external disk holds TWO TERABYTES, and cost about $80.00. (It is partitioned into 4 separate drives for such purposes.)
My personal connection to the Rad Lab was that my EE professor at Tufts (1964-’66) was Prof. Hammond. He’d been at the Rad Lab, and referred to MIT as “Tech”. I have to wonder if he contributed to the books and what he worked on there.
Here were guys figuring out how to make all the stuff we use now, and EXPLAINING IT.
Indeed: schematics, tube types, resistor and capacitor values (some pulse transformers are mysterious), and so on.
My favorite volume is “Vacuum Tube Amplifiers” by Valley and Wallman. I have two examples of tube type IF amplifiers I assume are radar IF strips. The design and implementation of these things are covered in this volume: the technology used to achieve wide bandwidth with proper phase charcteristics involves stagger tuned stages, specific tuned circuit Q values set with parallel resistances and more.
I didnt even mention the books on timing, waveforms, vacuum tube circuits, servomechanisms, radomes, so on and so on.
Analysis and design of servo systems is a faint memory now, perhaps that is just as well!
Long live this fundamental archive of good stuff, and may our interest in it survive long.
Roy
Roy Morgan
K1LKY since 1958
k1lky68@...
