Talk:History of radar

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"Pulse radar is the only way to detect the location, size, and velocity of objects"

This is not true. The velocity of an object can be measured with a CW radar.

[edit] Cleanup

I hate to randomly put a cleanup tag on a page I find, but this article really seems to need it. There's good information in it – although I think the very brief mention of the MIT RadLab should be expanded – but it's stylistically bad, and the mass of headings and subheadings seem illogical and haphazard. –Joke137 18:41, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Naval Research Laboratory

Engineer Bob, Are you sure about the claim that the 1930 observation by Taylor and Young was the first demo of CW interference radar? I remember reading that similar observations of aircraft reflecting signals were known in England well before the 1935 demo by Watson-Watt and Wilkins, and in fact lead to them suggesting their radar experiment. But I do not know the exact date, or whether it predates the the Taylor and Young observation. I will dig around and see if I can find the reference again. -- Op. Deo 09:51, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

• The Taylor/Young observations were made in 1922; 1930 was Hyland's detection of an aircraft. Robert M. Page credits Taylor & Young with the accidental discovery of radar in his 1979 book The Origin of Radar, which is consistent with information on the IEEE and NRL websites. Engineer Bob 10:10, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I carelessly misread the wrong date in the article, and jumped to quite the wrong conclusion. I am not familiar with the Page book - I will go and read it. All I can add further is that what may be regarded as the first actual use of CW radar was by Appleton and Barnett in 1924, see Appleton Nobel prize lecture, when they measured the 90 km height of the E-Layer. -- Op. Deo 12:10, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Battle of the Beams

This term is normally used for the various systems used by the Germans to direct their bombers (Lorenz, Knickebein, X-Gerat, Y-Gerat etc) and the British countermeasures like meacons, rather than radar.

Radar and ROC Curves

A "Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve" or "ROC Curve" plots the true positive 'signal' rate against the false positive signal rate (signal to noise ratio). This concept is used frequently in biomedical research to characterize the quality of diagnostic tests. This method was reportedly developed during the early years of radar in attempting to measure the 'operating characteristics' of a given radar technician (eg their ability to sort 'friend' from 'foe' during the WWII use of radar in defending Britain from German bombing raids). Does anyone know whether there is truth to this and can you provide a reference?