Technical Innovations
The One-Mile Telescope, was the first to use Earth-rotation aperture synthesis (described by Ryle as "super-synthesis") and the first to give radio maps with a resolution better than that of the human eye. The telescope was made up of three 120 ton dishes, each of which is 18 m in diameter. Two of the dishes are fixed, while the third can be moved along an 800 m long (half mile) rail track, at speeds of up to 6.4 km/h. There were 60 different stations along the track, which is straight to within 0.9 cm, and whose far end was raised by 5 cm to allow for the curvature of the Earth over its length. The observing frequencies were usually 408 MHz (75 cm; the resolution was 80 arcsec) and 1.4 GHz (21 cm; the resolution was 20 arcsec, three times better than that of the unaided eye).
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