Battle of the Beams

3 comments

• hi_hi 52 minutes ago
  For those interested in this topic I can’t recommend the following book enough.

  https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1127842.Most_Secret_W...

  Many of the overarching themes and challenges of dealing with technical problems where you have incomplete information will be familiar to many here.

  According to the publications section of his Wikipedia, the book is available for free on archive.org. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Victor_Jones
• ggm 14 minutes ago
  Decca navigation gear was common in British boats operating in near coastal waters right up to the 70s and 80s. The fundamentals of how this system worked were not radically different to the beam systems used for navigation in the war.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decca_Navigator_System

  Loran and then GPS competed and replaced.

  Robert Buderi's book on Radar is an amazing read to one side of this, it drives all the way through to VLSI. Fascinating stuff.

  https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Invention_that_C...
• LoganDark 4 minutes ago
  > The Germans became convinced the British had somehow learned to bend radio signals.

  I love learning about theories like this from less advanced times. Feels like a taste of a simpler world.