Word: system
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...from the earth periodically shut of the largest of Explorer VI's three radio transmitters. A memory device called Telebit takes over, stores up what the satellite learns during its silence. When the transmitter is turned on again, Telebit spills out the stored information in the digital transmission system, a coding method so concise that data collected during a 4½-hour period can be sent in a few seconds...
...John Thaler (pronounced Thayler) of the Office of Naval Research. Thaler's primary field is nuclear weapons effects. But two years ago, he had a sudden notion that certain characteristics of the behavior of radio waves might be the key to a simple and reliable long-range detection system. Since both the ionosphere and the surface of the earth will deflect radio signals, a transmitter can angle its beam upward and the broad waves will carom back and forth between ground and sky as they proceed to circle the earth. Each deflection sends back an echo to the home...
...rocket that launched Sputnik I. Enlisting the aid of other colleagues, he turned his attention to missile launchings at Cape Canaveral. There he ran into bureaucracy. None of the armed forces would give him notice of projected firings; Tepee's men finally had to set up their own system of volunteer watchers on Cape Canaveral to warn them when a firing seemed imminent. Meanwhile, the FCC caviled about the frequencies he wanted to use. But such nonscientific problems came to an end in November, when Thaler tracked a Polaris so accurately that the top brass was immediately sold, gave...
Wrinkles Ahead. Navy enthusiasts point out that Tepee stations are low-powered and relatively cheap, talk of a system of six stations that would monitor any rocket the Russians set off or atomic bomb that they tested above ground. Thaler himself makes no such claims, recognizes that there are still plenty of wrinkles. "We know the theory and the equipment works.'' said Thaler last week, "and our experiments have been successful from the beginning, but we will have to learn a lot more before we will be able to say we have a system. We have been trying...
...could be used against it." But the Defense Department's careful-going Research Director Herbert York concedes that "the ionospheric backscatter principle is a sound one." Give him a year. Thaler predicted, and he hoped he could go to the Defense Department and say: "Here we have a system. Go ahead with the hardware...