Word: sonar
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Dates: during 1946-1946
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...other gadget: sonar, radar's supersonic cousin. A sonar-equipped locomotive, by means of an oscillator and amplifier, would keep sending out whistle blasts pitched so high that nobody could hear them; but if a signal box ahead had its danger arm up, a reflector would send back the sound waves to the locomotive. There a microphone would detect the supersonic racket, a bell would ring (or a light flash), and the engineer would throttle down to his foggy-foggy...
Ultrasonic Shrimp. As" one means of detecting enemy submarines, the Navy used sonar, a device which bounced off them beams of sound waves too short for reception by the human ear. But in subtropical waters a kind of shrimp interfered: the snapping of their claws made these same "ultrasonic" sounds. Enemy submarines, the Navy feared, might hide behind this interference. As it turned out, "ultrasonic" shrimp did not exist where German U-boats most commonly cruised; but the)' did live in the waters off Japan, and U.S. submarines hid from listening Japanese behind the noise of the shrimps...
From an underwater sound laboratory located in Hemingway Gymnassium during the war, scientists helped fight the successful battle against the German U-bout. University officials revealed this week, as the Navy took the wraps off another of its secret weapons "sonar," which stands for sound, navigation, and ranging...
...important phase of work done here was development of the bearing, deviation indicator, which enabled sonar operators to train their sound projectors on submarines with greater speed and accuracy. Also designed were sound gear monitors, which were portable test units used to keep BDI gear in operation condition...