History
The earliest forms of RAM were the materials called Sumpf and Schornsteinfeger, a coating used in Germany during the World War II for the snorkels (or periscopes) of submarines, to lower their reflectivity in the 20-centimeter radar band the Allies used. The material had a layered structure and was based on graphite particles and other semiconductive materials embedded in a rubber matrix. The material's efficiency was partially reduced by the action of sea water.
Germany also pioneered the first aircraft to use RAM during World War II, in the form of the Horten Ho 229. It used a carbon-impregnated plywood that would have made it very stealthy to Britain's primitive radar of the time. It is unknown if the carbon was incorporated for stealth reasons or because of Germany's metal shortage.
Read more about this topic: Radar-absorbent Material
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”
—Attributed to Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)
“To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)