IEEE History Center: Kenneth Bainbridge Abstract

Kenneth Bainbridge Interview (June 10, 1991)(PDF, 194 KB)

This interview is part of the Rad Lab Collection.

Kenneth T. Bainbridge was a member of the Radiation Laboratory from 1940 to 1945. As the first member to be recruited and given military security clearance, he traveled to Washington, D.C. in early October 1940. There he met Vannevar Bush, Karl T. Compton, James B. Conant, Ernest O. Lawrence, and Alfred L. Loomis, and visited the Naval Research Laboratory to see radars in operation. He chaired a session of at the Conference on Applied Nuclear Physics, held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, October 2 to November 2, 1940. At this meeting, heavy recruitment was done behind the scenes for Radiation Laboratory staff. He began as head of the Modulator Group in November 1940. He served in that capacity until March 1941. From March to May 1941 Bainbridge served as a representative on a technical mission in England. From May to August the same year he was assigned to Administration as a British liaison in the document office. He shifted his attention to high-power ground systems, CXBL (ship control of interception class), SM (CXBL), and SCR-615 (S-band ground controlled interception) between August 1941 and May 1942. He became head of Division 8 responsible for SM, SP (shipborne interception-control radar), SCR-682 (ground systems search and warning class) and SCR-584 (S-band AA ground-based fire control), MEW (microwave early-warning radar), search, fighter-control, and fire-control radars.

In his interview, Bainbridge describes his research at General Electric, Cavendish Laboratories, and Harvard University before Rad Lab. He recounts his introduction to radar and the early planning stages of Rad Lab. He discusses the roles of Vannevar Bush, Edward Bowles, I. I. Rabi, Lee DuBridge, and Wheeler Loomis in the organization of the program.

Bainbridge explains his involvement as a session chairman of the Applied Nuclear Physics Conference in October 1940. He describes his work on the SM, MEW, ASM and shares the details of his assignment as a British liaison. He discusses the communications between Rad Lab and various branches of the military. He also addresses the magnetron and its role in radar development, his working relationship with John Cockcroft, E.G. "Taffy" Bowen, and ultimately, his transition to Los Alamos in 1943.

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