Do you know what a Radio Detection and Ranging system is? I will give you a clue, most congested airports today wouldn’t be able to function at all without this invention by Sir Robert Watson-Watt. Not yet? A Radio Detection and Ranging system is a device known today as a RADAR that uses radio waves and echoes of those waves to locate objects in the sky. Although some work on using radio echoes for detection purposes had already been done by other engineers prior to Watson-Watt, it was this Scottish man’s work and contribution what paved the way to the invention of the first practical radar system.
Sir Robert Watson was born on April 13th, 1892 in Brechin, Scotland. He graduated with a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from St. Andrews University in 1912. After graduation, he started working with Professor William Peddie, and became interested in the study of radio waves. Later on, Watson-Watt got interested in meteorology because he realized he could employ his knowledge on radio waves to detect thunderstorms. He went to work for the Royal Aircraft Factory of England in 1915 where he did research on how to warn pilots of potentially dangerous weather conditions. The initial conclusions drawn from his experiments were that he needed to find a way to display and record the radio signals he was using.
In 1933, Watson-Watt became superintendent of a government radio department in Teddington. Hitler had just come to power in Germany by that time and threatened Europe with a “death ray” based on radio waves that “would be able to destroy towns and kill people”. As an employee of the government, Watson-Watt was forced to work on a project to come up with a way to attack German airplanes using radio waves in case Hitler decided to attack. Watson-Watt thought that destroying airplanes with radio waves was not feasible, but he believed that radio waves could be used to detect enemy airplanes at far away distances. With the economic aid of the British government, he moved to Daventry in Leicestershire in 1935 where he experimented with a shortwave radio transmitter and was able to detect an airplane at distance of 27 km. Essentially, this system would become the predecessor of the modern radar, which basically uses a powerful transmitter to shoot out high frequency radio waves and then uses a receiver to listen for an echo of the radio waves impacting an object in the air. Given the speed of a radio wave to be close to the speed of light and a measurement of the Doppler shift of the echo, the system can locate an airplane and calculate how far away it is.
Given Watson-Watt initial success, he used a more powerful transmitter and was able to locate airplanes flying as far as 120 km away from the radar. This invention would become invaluable when World War II broke 4 years later.
For more information on his biography and a picture of Sir Robert Watson-Watt go to:
http://www.radarpages.co.uk/people/watson-watt/watson-watt.htm
More details on his invention and biography:
http://www.wdc.rl.ac.uk/ionosondes/history/watsonwatt.html
http://www.zephyrus.co.uk/robertwatsonwatt.html
Sir Robert Watson was born on April 13th, 1892 in Brechin, Scotland. He graduated with a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from St. Andrews University in 1912. After graduation, he started working with Professor William Peddie, and became interested in the study of radio waves. Later on, Watson-Watt got interested in meteorology because he realized he could employ his knowledge on radio waves to detect thunderstorms. He went to work for the Royal Aircraft Factory of England in 1915 where he did research on how to warn pilots of potentially dangerous weather conditions. The initial conclusions drawn from his experiments were that he needed to find a way to display and record the radio signals he was using.
In 1933, Watson-Watt became superintendent of a government radio department in Teddington. Hitler had just come to power in Germany by that time and threatened Europe with a “death ray” based on radio waves that “would be able to destroy towns and kill people”. As an employee of the government, Watson-Watt was forced to work on a project to come up with a way to attack German airplanes using radio waves in case Hitler decided to attack. Watson-Watt thought that destroying airplanes with radio waves was not feasible, but he believed that radio waves could be used to detect enemy airplanes at far away distances. With the economic aid of the British government, he moved to Daventry in Leicestershire in 1935 where he experimented with a shortwave radio transmitter and was able to detect an airplane at distance of 27 km. Essentially, this system would become the predecessor of the modern radar, which basically uses a powerful transmitter to shoot out high frequency radio waves and then uses a receiver to listen for an echo of the radio waves impacting an object in the air. Given the speed of a radio wave to be close to the speed of light and a measurement of the Doppler shift of the echo, the system can locate an airplane and calculate how far away it is.
Given Watson-Watt initial success, he used a more powerful transmitter and was able to locate airplanes flying as far as 120 km away from the radar. This invention would become invaluable when World War II broke 4 years later.
For more information on his biography and a picture of Sir Robert Watson-Watt go to:
http://www.radarpages.co.uk/people/watson-watt/watson-watt.htm
More details on his invention and biography:
http://www.wdc.rl.ac.uk/ionosondes/history/watsonwatt.html
http://www.zephyrus.co.uk/robertwatsonwatt.html
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