Initial Professional Work
After graduating from MIT in 1940, and unable to meet the physical requirements for military service, Singleton took a Civil Service position as an electrical engineer at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, then located at the Navy Yard, Washington, D.C. Singleton was involved in analyzing a process that was eventually called “degaussing,” giving protection to cargo ship from German-laid magnetic naval mines by reducing the natural magnetic field surrounding the vessel’s steel hull.
In 1942, Philip M. Morse, a professor at MIT, organized the Anti-Submarine Warfare Operations Research Group (ASWORG) on the staff of Admiral Ernest King, then Chief of Naval Operations. Having shown his mathematical skills in the degaussing developments, Singleton was invited to join the ASWORG; in doing so, he contributed to the founding of operations research in America.
As the Allies prepared for re-conquering Europe, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS – forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency) had a great demand for personnel with scientific capabilities. Singleton joined the OSS in 1944 and was sent to Europe. He remained there until the end of the war, and left the OSS when it was disbanded in the fall of 1945.
Singleton joined the ITT Corporation at their New York City headquarters in 1946. ITT was at that time involved in straightening out its patent rights from wartime work in the U.S., as well as in Germany. With his education and wartime experience, Singleton took a position as a patent engineer, and served ITT in this function for two years.
In the fall of 1948, Singleton returned to MIT to pursue a doctorate in electrical engineering. He was able to obtain Jerome Wiesner as his mentor. (Wiesner was later the President of MIT and also Science Advisor to three U.S. Presidents.) At the Rad Lab during WWII, Wiesner had developed an important optimum linear filter and prediction technique. For his dissertation, Singleton generalized Wiesner’s technique for the nonlinear situation, making a major contribution to the emerging field of information theory; he was awarded the Sc.D. degree in 1950.
While pursuing his doctorate, Singleton's efforts were sposored under a U.S. Army Signal Corps contract at the MIT Research Laboratory for Electronics. His accomplishments there also included the design and fabrication of an early digital computer – a special-purpose machine that computed correlation functions.
After receiving his doctorate, Singleton accepted a position as a Research Associate with General Electric in Schenectady, New York. There he continued work in information theory and was introduced to advanced practices of industrial research and development. In 1951, Singleton was invited to join a new team headed by Charles B. “Tex” Thornton in the Aerospace Group at Hughes Aircraft; he accepted and moved to Los Angeles. At Hughes, Singleton entered the emerging fields of digital and semiconductor electronics, applying these technologies in the development of the fire control system for the F-102 aircraft. In 1952, Singleton took his expertise to North American Aviation’s Los Angeles Division to work on an inertial navigation system for the Navajo missile.
Tex Thornton left Hughes in 1953, forming a firm initially called Electro-Dynamics; the next year, this became Litton Industries. Singleton joined Litton in 1954, and by 1958, he was the Vice President and General Manager of the Electronics Engineering Division. During this period, he led the development of a new type of two-degree-of-freedom, low-drift gyroscope with associated digital electronics. This formed the heart of the Litton LN-4 Inertial Navigation System, which was the first such guidance system for fighter aircraft. With Singleton serving as the chief salesman, the first adoption of the LN-4 was by the West German Air Force in 1959. When Singleton was named to the National Academy of Engineering in 1979, the development of this gyroscope was cited as an example of his inventive genius.
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