History
Much of the early research into effective OTH systems was carried out under the direction of Dr. William J. Thaler at the Naval Research Laboratory; The work was dubbed "Project Teepee" (Thaler's project). Their first experimental system, MUSIC (Multiple Storage, Integration, and Correlation), became operational in 1955 and was able to detect rocket launches 600 miles (970 km) away at Cape Canaveral, and nuclear explosions in Nevada at 1,700 miles (2,700 km). A greatly improved system, a testbed for an operational radar, was later built in 1961 as MADRE (Magnetic-Drum Radar Equipment) at Chesapeake Bay. As the names imply, both systems relied on the comparison of returned signals stored on magnetic drums, then the only high-speed storage systems available.
The first truly operational development was an Anglo-American system known as Cobra Mist. Built starting in the late 1960s, Cobra Mist used an enormous 10 MW transmitter and could detect aircraft over the western USSR from its location in Suffolk. When the system started testing in 1972, however, an unexpected source of noise proved to render it unusable. They eventually abandoned the site in 1973, the source of the noise never having been identified.
The Soviet Union was also working on similar systems during this time, and started operation of their own experimental system in 1971. This was followed shortly thereafter by the first operational system, known in the west as Steel Yard, which started operation in 1976.
Read more about this topic: Over-the-horizon Radar
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgement.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)