Albert Taylor and Leo Crawford Young – USA

1922 – The two electrical engineers Albert H Taylor and Leo Crawford Young from the Naval Research Laboratory (USA) locate a wooden ship for the first time.

Albert Hoyt Taylor (1879–1961) was an American electrical engineer. Alfred Hoyt Taylor and Leo Crawford Young made the first US observations of the radio reflection phenomenon that led to the creation of radar in the United States Navy.

Under the direction of Taylor the Naval Radio Research Laboratory conducted studies in radio communication. Taylor, assisted by Young, had by 1922 pushed his experiments to frequencies of 60 megacycles by utilizing superheterodyne receiving circuits. While working at these frequencies during the summer of that year, Taylor and Young first noted the reflection of signals from vessels passing on the Potomac River and discovered the possibility of obtaining the ranges and bearings of these vessels. This was in fact the rediscovery of radar, called by Taylor at the time “the detection of enemy ships and aircraft.” In September 1922 he addressed a letter to the Bureau of Engineering requesting authority to exploit this discovery stating that the equipment should work during darkness and low visibility as well as on a bright sunny day. Surprisingly, Taylor was not authorized to continue his radar research at that time.

Albert H. Taylor at work at the Naval Research Laboratory

Leo Crawford Young (1891–1981) was an American radio engineer.

Young was interested in wireless telegraphy in his teenage years. He constructed his first radio receiver in 1905. Young enlisted as a radio specialist in the Naval Reserve Force during World War I. He worked under the direction of Dr. A. Hoyt Taylor, then district director of naval communications. In 1918 Young was ordered to Washington to join in the establishment of a new agency, the Naval Aircraft Radio Laboratory.

Both men were reunited in 1919 when Taylor was placed in command of the Naval Aircraft Radio Laboratory. During 1922, Taylor and Young had registered an historic observation of high-frequency radio waves reflecting from the wooden steamer Dorchester on the Potomac River as it passed between a transmitter and a portable receiver. This led to a CW radar development project.

In 1930, Leo Young was placed in charge of a research project at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) that resulted in the first detection of aircraft by reflected radio waves. Four years later, he was responsible for research that led to the development of the first system using radio pulses for range determination by runtime measuring.

Leo Young wearing radio headphones

The technical conditions we call CW radar today, and relative movement between the radar equipment and its target were necessary in order to detect the subject targets.

1930 Lawrence A. Hyland, also of the NRL (USA), locates an aircraft for the first time.

• Lawrence Alvison “Pat” Hyland (1897–1989) was an American physicist and electrical engineer. Hyland was born in Canada but came with his family to the United States in 1899. He was raised in Massachusetts.
• Hyland enlisted in the US Army in 1917 and saw extensive combat as a sergeant of field artillery in Europe. He later enlisted in the US Navy and served as a radioman both on cruisers and in aircraft during the pioneering years of naval communications. He was discharged in 1926 as a chief radioman.
• Hyland joined the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) as a radio engineer in 1926. He and other researchers discovered that an airplane flying over their radio antenna caused changes in the signals they received. Further experiments by Hyland and his fellow researchers proved that radar could not only detect nearby airplanes but could also be used to find out exactly where they were in the sky. In 1934, Hyland and two of his colleagues received the first US patent for radar technology. Hyland was granted 39 US patents.

1981 Lawrence Hyland presenting Military award

1931 William Butement and PE Pollard introduced the first British shipborne radar system. Parabolic antennas with horn radiators were used as transmitting and receiving antennas. Although good results were still being achieved over short distances, they stopped work on this project due to a lack of government support.

1933 Rudolf Kühnhold presented a radio measuring device based on the sonar he had invented in 1931. It operates on a wavelength of 48 cm and had a transmission power of over 40 watts. The FREYA radar was developed from this test and was mass-produced as early as 1938.

German Radar “Würzburg-Riese and FREYA”

Fun Fact: The Freya radar was developed in Germany prior to WWII. It was named after the Norse goddess Freya because legend has it she could see in the dark.

1935 – Robert Watson-Watt and Arnold F. Wilkins run the first practical test of an early warning radar, which could locate aircraft up to a distance of 10 km.

• In the fall of 1939, two Freya radar stations were deployed on Helgoland, two on Wangerooge, one on Borkum and one on Norderney to cover the North Sea coast. On December 18, 1939, Freya radar detected 24 RAF Wellingtons on their approach to Wilhelmshaven. Interceptors from Jever, immediately alerted, were directed to the bomber group. Sixteen Messerschmitt 110s and 24 Messerschmitt 109s intercepted the British bombers well offshore. Fourteen Wellingtons were shot down. From that point forward, British bombers flew missions only at night. Nevertheless, the German BF110s were still effective with radar.

Sample Portable Radar System – AN/TPS (Westinghouse Defense, USA)

• AN/TPS-43 is a lightweight air and ground transportable radar designed for use with manned aircraft or surface-to-air missile batteries in a wide variety of tactical environments. It provides complete 3D cover to 447 km on a fighter or fighter-bomber aircraft and measures heights over the full range by signal amplitude comparisons in six channels. Extensive clutter rejection and electronic counter-countermeasures features are incorporated in the design, including a digital coherent moving target indicator system, pulse-to-pulse frequency agility, jamming analysis and transmission selection (JATS), coded pulse anti-clutter systems and sidelobe blanking. This latest model of the AN/TPS-43 includes extensive equipment refinements and increased operational capability.

1936 George Metcalf and William Hahn of General Electric develop the klystron, which is used as a signal amplifier or oscillator.