What did we use before Radar??

Let'sgoflying!

Let'sgoflying!

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Dave Taylor
damn I'm getting old....can't remember if I posted this already!

thanks to Bill Suffa for the help in converting to pdf.
 

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Take a close look at the feet on the dude in the middle of the third-to-last picture. What's up with that?
 
No pictures from China. In the defense of Chunking, the use of spotters all over the immense countryside gave about 30 minutes' warning. Mark 1 eyeballs.
 
wabower said:
Take a close look at the feet on the dude in the middle of the third-to-last picture. What's up with that?
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Nothing. Look at the shadows from the struts.
 
bbchien said:
No pictures from China. In the defense of Chunking, the use of spotters all over the immense countryside gave about 30 minutes' warning. Mark 1 eyeballs.
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Just enough so they could put the planes in caves and leave the men in the open right doc.
 
All it takes is one ticked off bumble bee to make you have a VERY bad day.
 
That's cool.

I'm imagining the peace-time applications, too. The pilot can roll down his window and shout out a request for flight following.
-harry
 
I have studied WWII and aviation history, and had never seen pictures of those before, nor ever read about them.

Thank you for sharing those pictures!
 
It's pretty amazing now, if the opposition shoots a howitzer round, and the system is "on", the satellite tracks the projectile BACK to it's origin, gives co-ordinates, and targets the return round. All before you can get the engine started on the truck.
 
CrashAxe said:
I have studied WWII and aviation history, and had never seen pictures of those before, nor ever read about them.

Thank you for sharing those pictures!
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A good read is "the Invention That Changed the World" by Robert Buderi. It's a book about RADAR; the author interviewed a number of the inventors and people that improved on the technique. He also shows what these scientists did with the technology outside of RADAR.

I got it in the discount bargain bin at B&N for $3.99. Right next to it was "A History of the American Sailing Navy" by Howard Chappelle.
 
From the looks of the uniforms and leggings, those pictures look to be from WW1.

Years ago at a science exhibit at Balboa Park in San Diego, they had two huge disks that looked like solid satellite dishes set up about 75 ft apart, facing each other. There was a stairway that would allow you to get to a platform at the back middle of each disk. There was a hole in the middle of the dish so you could hear the sounds the dish picked up. I was on one dish, my girlfriend was on the other. We were able to converse with each other in a normal tone of voice. It was kind of amazing, she sounded like she was right next to me, not 75 ft away in a crowded science hall.

Those contraptions definitely worked.

John
 
John Baker said:
Years ago at a science exhibit at Balboa Park in San Diego, they had two huge disks that looked like solid satellite dishes set up about 75 ft apart, facing each other. There was a stairway that would allow you to get to a platform at the back middle of each disk. There was a hole in the middle of the dish so you could hear the sounds the dish picked up. I was on one dish, my girlfriend was on the other. We were able to converse with each other in a normal tone of voice. It was kind of amazing, she sounded like she was right next to me, not 75 ft away in a crowded science hall.
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You can do the same thing at the Mitchell Park Domes in Milwaukee, only you're using the entire building - If you stand exactly opposite the center from someone else, you can talk very softly and be heard from quite a distance.

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flyingcheesehead said:
You can do the same thing at the Mitchell Park Domes in Milwaukee, only you're using the entire building - If you stand exactly opposite the center from someone else, you can talk very softly and be heard from quite a distance.
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There is a large room (that used to be the House chamber) in the U.S. Capitol building that has an ellipsoidal ceiling, so if you stand at one focus you can whisper to a person quite a distance away located at the other focus.
 
Trapper John said:
There is a large room (that used to be the House chamber) in the U.S. Capitol building that has an ellipsoidal ceiling, so if you stand at one focus you can whisper to a person quite a distance away located at the other focus.
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Did you learn that from Dan Brown (The Lost Symbol) or elsewhere?
 
bbchien said:
It's pretty amazing now, if the opposition shoots a howitzer round, and the system is "on", the satellite tracks the projectile BACK to it's origin, gives co-ordinates, and targets the return round. All before you can get the engine started on the truck.
Click to expand...

Yep, the only problem with the Firefinder counter-battery system is by turning it on, you've announced your presence to every energy-seeking counter-counter system for miles around.

There have been lots of attempts to use passive acoustics to solve the counter-artillery/mortar/sniper problem, but the propagation problems and time lag have proven nearly insurmountable.
 
I've seen even older "old school" ear enhancers... there is a ceremonial cave in a cliffside at the Bandolier ruins in NM; over 1500 yrs old, if I remember right. There are two man-sized coves cut into the rock at either end, about 60 feet apart, and the cave itself is sort of a quarter-sphere. Being fairly soft, porous rock, and a dirt floor, the cave itself is not very echo-y. But... two people can stand in these coves, facing the walls, and converse in a normal voice. Meanwhile, anyone standing elsewhere in the cave cannot hear them very well at all. Not sure what role it played in the ceremonies, but it works very well.
There are numerous smaller, shallow, spheroidal chambers all over those cliffs... no doubt very effective watching/listening posts for guarding the entrance to the valley.
 
dmccormack said:
There have been lots of attempts to use passive acoustics to solve the counter-artillery/mortar/sniper problem, but the propagation problems and time lag have proven nearly insurmountable.
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Really? Perhaps not for the same applications you are thinking of, but my understanding is that BBN's boomerang system (http://www.bbn.com/boomerang) has been pretty successful in Iraq. Also, a civilian version, shotspotter (http://www.shotspotter.com/), works pretty well too. My sources are biased 'tho (I know ex-employees of both companies).

Chris
 
Trapper John said:
There is a large room (that used to be the House chamber) in the U.S. Capitol building that has an ellipsoidal ceiling, so if you stand at one focus you can whisper to a person quite a distance away located at the other focus.
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Works up in the dome in St. Peter's in the Vatican, as well.
 
Ghery said:
Works up in the dome in St. Peter's in the Vatican, as well.
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I once heard that the Oval Office had this effect, too, but I can't seem to find any corroboration for that memory right now.
 
Trapper John said:
There is a large room (that used to be the House chamber) in the U.S. Capitol building that has an ellipsoidal ceiling, so if you stand at one focus you can whisper to a person quite a distance away located at the other focus.
Click to expand...

It was probably very bad for politics if one focus was in the right wing and the other in the left wing... :D
 
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