Decca Radar - History

History

Decca Radar launched its first marine radar, the 159, in August 1949. (The radar was named after the number of the London bus that passed the Brixton laboratory where the radar was designed and manufactured.) The company held a position at the forefront of commercial marine radar technology, producing the first true motion radar, the first anti-collision radar and the first "Type Approved" colour radar. An indication of the influence of the company is that the word for radar in Chinese is "Decca", and China, as the third largest ship builder in the world, most of ships it builds are equipped with navigation radars of Decca origin (either license produced or directly imported).

Decca Radar was bought in 1979 by Racal Electronics forming Racal-Decca Marine and related companies. Early Racal-Decca radars had dropped the Decca name which mariners had trusted for years, but outcry from marine customers prompted its return. At this time the business was run from New Malden in Surrey. In the mid-1980s, Decca introduced the BridgeMaster series of radars, which used a rasterized colour display. The BridgeMaster II series followed, with a Motorola 68000 CPU and powerful software options like vector traces showing the trajectories of other ships as part of the ARPA package.

In December 1996 the US corporation Litton Industries bought Racal-Decca Marine, as well as Sperry Marine and C.Plath, in order to strengthen their marine electronics position under the Litton Marine Systems name. The Decca name, engineering, and design continued to be used on the BridgeMaster II and, in 1998, the BridgeMaster E series of radars was launched. The Sperry section of Litton Marine Systems, based in Charlottesville, Virginia, was already producing its own line of marine radars, the Rascar, at the time of the acquisition but this was replaced by the BridgeMaster E. The Rascar had been the American-made radar of choice in the American Navy and Coast Guard but eventually the BridgeMaster E made inroads there as well. Both Decca and Sperry radar divisions were under heavy competitive pressure from Gold Star and Furuno, though remained the radars of choice on large ocean-going vessels.