Five Years At the Radiation Laboratory. Presented to Members of the Radiation Laboratory by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 1946.

MIT RADIATION LABORATORY.

Published by Cambridge, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1947

First edition, first printing, of this uncommon memento of one of the 20th century's most triumphant technological efforts, documenting and profusely illustrating the activities of the MIT Rad Lab, the "birthplace of cybernetics" (Scaruffi). A farewell souvenir produced for and distributed solely to members of the unit by MIT, it is consequently scarce in any condition. WorldCat and Library Hub locate just one copy outside of the US, at the University of St Andrews; within the US we trace copies at 11 institutions. Hosted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Radiation Laboratory was "one of the most effective and most visible laboratories of the war", gaining a reputation for its "flexible, collaborative work and a distinctly nonhierarchical management style" (Turner, pp. 18-19). Established in October 1940 to develop wartime radar through a fusion of industry and academia, the laboratory was funded by the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC). The head of the NDRC was the electrical engineer and presidential scientific advisor Vannevar Bush. Bush also directed the NDRC's successor, the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), which was the driving force behind the Manhattan Project - whose work the Radiation Laboratory clearly foreshadows. As a former Dean at MIT, Bush pushed for the centrality of MIT to the Radiation Laboratory, against Alfred Loomis's suggestion that the Carnegie Institution run the programme. Bush was a formative influence on the unit's groundbreaking interdisciplinary nature: "[his] approach created a new template for interaction between science and government, as well as between science and war" (Scaruffi). Historian Peter Galison described it as a "trading zone", where scientists, technologists, and administrators were actively encouraged to exchange ideas and techniques in an environment populated by different professional subcultures (cited in Turner, p. 19). The nickname Rad Lab "disguised the lab's real work, as people thought nuclear physics was too immature to impact the war. To find the right staff, MIT hosted a conference on applied nuclear physics, with an emphasis on microwaves. Attendees noticed many private meetings, and by the end of the conference, the core staff had been hired. By the end of that fall, early radar testing was ongoing on the roof of Building 6. Rad Lab ran for five years and contributed to the development of radar and anti-radar technology during the war. Other Rad Lab inventions were airborne bombing radars, shipboard search radars, harbor and coastal defense radars, gun-laying radars, ground-controlled approach radars for aircraft blind landing, interrogate-friend-or-foe beacon systems, the long-range navigation system, the microwave early-warning radars, and air-to-surface vessel radars. Rad Lab scientists invented almost half of the radar deployed in World War II and also launched a new era of collaboration between government, industry, and academia. Many of these technologies had a lasting impact on the war. When Rad Lab formally closed on December 31, 1945, MIT shared its research with the world in a monumental publishing effort called the MIT Radiation Laboratory Series. Comprised of twenty-eight volumes, this series encapsulated a huge amount of knowledge generated during the war and influenced post-war engineering" (US National Archives/Google Arts & Culture). It published the work of mathematicians such as Norbert Wiener, who played an important role in the Rad Lab's design of antiaircraft weapons, developing a filter to predict the position of German bombers from radar reflections - now known as the Wiener filter - and authoring the classified Radiation Laboratory report on the subject that became known as the "Yellow Peril". "Building 20", the timber structure (intended to be temporary) in which the Rad Lab was housed from December 1943, was demolished in 1998. Its 'obituary' in the New York Times celebrated it as "a true altar of. Seller Inventory # 149492

Bibliographic Details

Title: Five Years At the Radiation Laboratory. ...
Publisher: Cambridge, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1947
Edition: 1st Edition