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The MIT Radiation Laboratory,
operated on this site
between 1940 and 1945, advanced the
allied war effort by
making fundamental contributions to
the design and deployment of
microwave radar systems. Used on
land, sea, and in the air, in many
adaptations, radar was a decisive
factor in the outcome of the
conflict. The laboratory's 3900
employees made lasting
contributions to microwave theory
and technology, operational
radar, systems engineering,
long-range navigation, and control equipment.
Radar, an acronym for
radio detection and
ranging, was patented by British
scientist Sir Robert Watson-Watt
for meteorological applications in 1935.
Since practical applications for
airborne microwave radar had not been
developed before World War II, the
government of England requested assistance
from the U.S. National Defense
Research Committee (NDRC) to develop this
capability. Britain's secret Tizard Mission
was dispatched to Washington, D.C.
in September 1940 to introduce the
10-centimeter cavity magnetron. In
October 1940, MIT was chosen for the site of
an independent laboratory that
would be staffed by civilian and academic
scientists from every discipline. Fourteen
months before the U.S. entered
World War II, MIT's newly formed Radiation
Laboratory began its investigation
of microwave electronics.
During World War II, large-scale
research at MIT's Radiation
Laboratory was devoted to the rapid
development of microwave radar.
Projects included physical electronics,
microwave physics,
electromagnetic properties of matter,
and microwave communication
principles. The "Rad Lab" designed
almost half of the radar
deployed in World War II, created over
100 different radar systems,
and constructed $1.5 billion worth of
radar. At the height of its
activities, the Rad Lab employed nearly
4,000 people working on
several continents. What began as a
British-American effort to make
microwave radar work, evolved into a
centralized laboratory
committed to understanding the theories
behind experimental radar
while solving its engineering problems.
The Rad Lab formally closed
on December 31, 1945, and its staff
members resumed peacetime their
activities. In its wake remained
tons of surplus equipment and the
concept for a basic research
center that was to continue in MIT's
Research Laboratory of
Electronics.
- Five Years at the Radiation
Laboratory
MIT,
Cambridge, 1946
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