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Tuxedo Park 204

Posted by timothy from the caviar-calipers dept.
Steve Mushero writes "Alfred Loomis - Lawyer, Wall St. Tycoon, Scientist, Inventor, Catalyst. This biography follows the life and times of Alfred Loomis of Tuxedo Park, NY, a man I'd never heard of. Imagine my surprise to read the book jacket, which described him as one of the most powerful men on Wall Street in the 1920's, a brilliant physicist, inventor of RADAR, LORAN, and the man who kicked off the race to build the atom bomb. While far from a historian, I follow economic and military history with some interest and have never even heard this man's name; which, it turns out, was the way he wanted it." Read more about this obscure but important scientist and entrepreneur in the rest of Steve's review, below.
Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II
author Jennet Conant
pages 330
publisher Simon & Schuster
rating 8
reviewer Steve Mushero
ISBN 0684872870
summary A biography of one of the greatest scientists and catalysts of our time, helping inventing RADAR and LORAN along with jumpstarting the Manhattan Project.

Loomis, a Harvard lawyer from a well-to-do WASP family, went from practicing law to doing artillery research in WWI to one of the most spectacular accumulations of Wall Street wealth in the go-go 1920's. He personally drove the creation of the electric utility industry and helped form or run most of the major Wall Street banks of the day (nearly all of which are still with us in original or merged form). Smart enough to see the 1929 crash coming, he sold his stocks early and entered the depression worth $50-100 million, all in cash.

How did he use this money ? By retiring to his real love, science and inventing, eventually being elected to the National Academy of Science. A brilliant man, at parties he would often play several games of chess simultaneously, with his back to the boards and while maintaining lively conversation with his other guests. When tackling scientific problems, he generated dozens of ideas to try and had dozens of teams running down these ideas, setting the stage for the Manhattan Project, which pursued all available avenues simultaneously.

During the Depression, Loomis built a huge laboratory in Tuxedo Park, a very wealthy enclave 40 miles northwest of New York City. The first gated community, it was largely populated by the Rockefellers, Morgans, and other rich scions of industry and finance. Considered the premier research establishment of its day, a typical day at the lab featured visits by Fermi, Lawrence, Einstein, Bohr, and scores of others, all helping Loomis work on important problems of the day.

Not content to be an observer, Loomis himself ran many of the experiments and published dozens of papers on a very wide variety of subjects. He would typically solve some major stumbling block in an area such as ultrasonics, microwaves, or biology and then leave others to work out the details.

Called to action in WWII by patriotism and is famous cousin, Henry Stimson, the War Secretary, he personally made RADAR a reality (borrowing heavily from British, who he convinced to give us all they knew), building the MIT Rad Lab from scratch into a war-time R&D lab of 5,000 people.

I had always thought RADAR played a minor role in WWII, but it turns out to have been extremely important, with nearly 25,000 units produced. It was conceived to help stop the German night raids on Britain, but beyond that helped end the U-Boat menace since Loomis' system could detect subs on the surface and even periscopes. Bombing RADARs guided bombers over the Continent and LORAN, which Loomis personally invented, guided all aircraft navigation in Europe, the Atlantic, and Pacific for the second half of the war.

Loomis helped kick off the hunt for the atom bomb more than a year before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, largely via his close friend the brilliant Nobel Laureate Ernest Lawrence at Berkeley (for whom the Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore labs are named). While Loomis did not actually work in the atom efforts (he was too busy with RADAR), he mobilized the money, scientists, and political will to make it happen. He foresaw in the 1930's how nuclear fission and Germany's war-mongering would spell bad news for the world.

The book itself paints all of this in very concrete ways, moving back and forth between Loomis' private and public life, including quotes from nearly all involved. The author is related to many players in the story, including some of Loomis' closest friends, and thus had access to personal papers and numerous family members through the ages.

Writing in a witty and sometimes humorous style ("[T]he RADAR scientists knew they needed a single transmit/receive antenna. The trouble was, no one knew how to build one.") the book is an engaging read all the way through. A fair amount of scandal is mentioned, as the book opens with the suicide of one of Loomis' closest friends (the author's great uncle) and moves from there to gradually expose all that was going on through three of the most exciting decades of this century.

The book left me very impressed with Alfred Loomis and motivated to work even harder pursue more advances in technology and science, not to mention finance. I hope none of are called to support a war effort in the manner he did, but there are many discoveries that remain for us all; if we are one-forth as productive as Alfred Loomis, we'll do very well indeed.

You can purchase Tuxedo Park from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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  • RADAR did play a minor role in WWII (Score:4, Funny)

    by Adam Rightmann ( 609216 ) on Friday January 24, 2003 @10:22AM (#5150858)
    but in the Korean War, he got promoted to Corporal, and could hear incoming medevac helicopters.

  • what about Robert Alexander Watson-Watt? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nickos ( 91443 ) on Friday January 24, 2003 @10:22AM (#5150863)
    inventor of RADAR

    I might be wrong, but I thought the Brit, Robert Alexander Watson-Watt invented radar.

    • Don't be silly, it had to be an American! (Score:4, Funny)

      by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Friday January 24, 2003 @10:31AM (#5150932) Journal
      Silly boy, don't you know the Americans invented and achieved everything? The first computer was not invented by Charles Babbage, Sir Isaac Newton didn't discover the laws of Physics, it wasn't Crick and Watson who discovered DNA and, most importantly of all, it was the Yanks and not the Brits (or even the Poles) who first captured working Enigma machines during World War 2!

      Why, even that less than stellar inventor Al Gore came up with the internet! That Tim Berners-Lee guy (and the folks at ARPANET) were a figment of everyone else's imagination!

      Anyone else fed up of revisionist history? Is is right that the version of Microsoft Encarta sold in the US credits Bell as inventing the telephone but that the one sold in Italy says it was Marconi? And that neither version even mentions the other guy, even in passing?

      • WHO GIVES A SH*T WHERE HE'S FROM?! (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Why do people get themselves all bent out of shape over nationalities? Do they think it somehow makes *them* look smarter? Reflected glory, riding coattails -- what a load of shit. As others have pointed out, most inventions are, in reality, entirely collaborative efforts, anyway, with work contributed by researchers, scientists and engineers from all over the globe. When somebody jumps up and down because somebody else has neglected to attribute some credit to the country the whiner happens to hail from, I smell an inferiority complex. Is that really as good as you get...?

    • Nationalist History. (Score:5, Informative)

      by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Friday January 24, 2003 @10:32AM (#5150939)
      I'm always amused by this type of nationalist history where, people of various nations "adjust" the facts to take credit for work that isn't entirely their own. The Russian's are exceptionally good at this, as they claim to have invented the telephone, television, flight and probably RADAR too.

      Englishman, Watt, was most definitely the inventor of RADAR. The Americans knew nothing about it until they were approached by the British regarding the need for a process to manufacture a single component in high volumes. This process, developed at Westinhouse, turned out to be the simple lamination of copper plates to make the part. The information about RADAR that was learned by the Americans lead to further R&D on Loomis' part as well as Westinghouse's development of the Microwave oven, the RADAR Range.

      Loomis did contribute a lot of R&D to the further advancement of RADAR but, he most certainly did not invent it.

      • Re:Nationalist History. (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        This component would be the cavity magnetron, developed in the UK - the example which was transported to the US (with no security) has been described as the single most valuable cargo ever to transit the Atlantic.
      • The chain of radar stations constructed in the late thirties were VHF/UHF only.

        The problem was that the wavelengths used were not sufficiently well reflected by smaller objects such as periscopes or to give the resolution neccessary for bomb navigation. Hence the invention of the magnetron by the British which produced RF at 3cm or above at high power. Unfortunately British industry couldn't produce the device cheaply enough (a magnetron dpends upon a very precisely engineered cavity). Loomis was responsible for the ideas for mass production of the magnetron in the mid 40s.

        The magnetron was used in warships and by planes (such as night fighters) but it was not permitted over German held territory until towards the end of the war so it didn't help bomber command much (the Americans flew by day, so they had less problems with navigation). It was decided that the wreckage of a magnetron (it is basiclly a precisely machined lump of metal) would give German intelligence enough information to be able to duplicate it.

        • The magnetron is also credited to a Dutch engineer (mr. Staal, who worked for Philips), who created one in 1935.

          More on Dutch contributions to radar development here [www.stw.nl].

          • Actually, this seems like it is another of those things with a varied history (depends on where you came from). The Encylopedia Britannica and the IEEE put the inventor as an American in 1921. However Calpoly credit Randall and Boot for making an invention in 1940. However the Japenese invented the divided anode magnetron in 1928. Most agree that an american, Spencer invented the microwave oven though.

            I suppose the truth of it is probably that the compact and relatively high power magnetron was invented by the British for use in radar and this was why a prototype was sent to the US as they didn't know how to make them in this form before. The previous microwave amplifiers such as the klystron were large, fragile an not so efficient.

            It was these factors (size, robustness and efficiency) that made the magentron so useful for mobile warfare.

    • Hey, moron, read the rest of the review:

      Called to action in WWII by patriotism and is famous cousin, Henry Stimson, the War Secretary, he personally made RADAR a reality (borrowing heavily from British, who he convinced to give us all they knew), building the MIT Rad Lab from scratch into a war-time R&D lab of 5,000 people.
      • Perhaps you should check the facts [doramusic.com] before calling other people names:

        "In March 1936, the Orfordness group were moved to Bawdsey Manor a little further down on the Suffolk coast. By this time plans were being put into action to construct enormous radar chain of detection aerials all around the eastern coastline of England and Scotland. The first of these were built between June 1936, and June 1937"

        Let's see, 1936 was before the outbreak of WWII wasn't it?

    • Watson-Watt Invented it [rampantscotland.com]

      "Watson-Watt became the superintendent of the radio division of the National Physics Laboratory in Teddington. In 1936 his radio stations were able to detect aircraft up to 70 miles away."

      "He persuaded the government to set up a network of radar stations to provide early warning of aircraft attacking over the English Channel. "Radar" was short for "radio detecting and ranging." It was due to radar that the over-stretched resources of the RAF were able to be in the right place at the right time as Luftwaffe aircraft streamed over during the Battle of Britain from August to October 1940. The Germans could not understand why the defending aircraft (such as the Spitfire, illustrated above) were so often there to meet them."

      Loomis helped mass produce it for mobile use and developed it [businessweek.com]

      "In the 1930s, British scientists were at the cutting edge of radar technology. While crude by modern standards, their systems could spot Nazi bombers up to 150 miles from the English coast, enough of a warning for Royal Air Force fighters to intercept them. But the radar apparatus was too bulky to mount in planes, and the equipment was not sensitive enough to detect a U-boat's periscope. That changed in early 1940, when physicists at the University of Birmingham invented the magnetron. This plump copper disk was only four inches across, but its glass horns emitted short-wavelength pulses of extremely high power--just the ticket for small radars that could probe much farther and resolve details far finer than any previous system."

      "When Prime Minister Winston Churchill learned of the magnetron, he sensed that it marked a turning point in the war. Given the state of British industry, though, he needed U.S. help in refining the magnetron and, most of all, producing them in volume. That August, he sent a mission to Washington, where it presented a top-secret magnetron to astonished U.S. researchers."

      So, as usual, a joint effort.

      BigTom

    • I believe you are right. I think this is simply the guy that found a cheap way to produce magnatrons... of course I could be wrong
    • Didn't Arthur C. Clark have a hand in the invention/concept of Radar? I could have sworn it's in his Bio on all of his books.
    • Here's one credible referance, "Confound & Destroy - 100 Group and the bomber support campaign" by Martin Streetly:

      "During the 1930s, as Europe prepared itself for a seemingly inevitable war, Britain and Germany began the practice of 'seeing' with radio energy. Radar, as this branch of electronics would later be known, was not new; the principle had been laid out by a German, Christian Hulsmeyer [historylea...site.co.uk] , in a patent of April 1904. "

    • That seems to be the consensus. However, like most complex technologies, there were a lot of people involved in the development of what we now call radar. I can't ever really fathom the need to give one cowboy all the credit for what are almost always large collaborative efforts. Anyway, here's a funny anecdote [mit.edu] about the invention of the T/R switch.
  • we invented RADAR! in Cambridge. I only know this because my girlfriends great grandfather worked on the project. He was also a lecturer at Cambridge University.

    • Re:RADAR was invented by the brits! (Score:5, Informative)

      by greechneb ( 574646 ) on Friday January 24, 2003 @10:33AM (#5150942) Journal
      The UK, the US, and several other countries were all working on radar at the same time. British scientists had made semi-working radar systems, but what Loomis did was take their projects, refine their ideas, and actually make it work. Without Loomis, radar probably would have taken at least another 5 years to develop into a working state.

      After finishing work on the radar project, Loomis actually turned his efforts into supervising the mass production of radar systems.
      • Erm?

        British scientists had made semi-working radar systems

        British scientists had made a totally working radar system. What they didn't have was one you could fit into a plane (for night fighting/maritime stuff/etc).

      • Re:RADAR was invented by the brits! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by NetFu ( 155538 ) on Friday January 24, 2003 @11:33AM (#5151334) Homepage Journal
        Actually, the basic principles of RADAR were discovered by the German physicist Heinrich Hertz in 1887 [about.com].

        I've also read that the Germans were working on RADAR applications at the same time the Brits and Americans were -- it just so happens that the Brits built the first application from the research. And, technically, the man who was mainly responsible for developing RADAR into a usable application was actually a Scot, not a Brit -- Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt [about.com]. You can talk all you want about how Great Britain includes England, Scotland, and NORTHERN Ireland, but most Irish and Scots I know would say a Scot!=Brit.

        Like most other inventions (airplanes or cars, anyone?) nothing is "invented" without the cooperation of scientists from ALL countries. There's no such thing as a single man inventing any of these things -- we may have been taught that in elementary school, but we all have to grow up and realize that things are quite a bit more complicated than that.
        • Great Britain comprises of England, Scotland and Wales. The United Kingdom (the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to give it its full name) comprises of those three nations and Norther Ireland.

          By definition, if you're from any of those four countries then you're British - there isn't an equivalent adjective for the United Kingdom so it applies to the Northern Irish too. For example, the British Olympic Association is made up of athletes from all four nations.

          (Please, no unnecessary debating about the Northern Ireland situation - this isn't a political posting, it's a geographical one.)

          Saying that someone who's Scottish isn't British is ridiculous. It's like saying that someone who's a Californian or Floridian isn't American. Just because you're associated to one place doesn't mean you're not associated to a larger place that encapsulates it.

          Of course, being Scottish doesn't make you English, as so many American sitcoms seem to think (Suddenly Susan springs to mind as a particularly guilty party). Saying that it does is about as stupid as suggesting that someone from Alaska is a Texan.

          So, to recap:

          Glasgow > Scotland > Great Britain > United Kingdom > European Union > Europe

          and;

          Los Angeles > California > United States of America > North America

          Hope that's useful for future reference.
          • "It's like saying that someone who's a Californian or Floridian isn't American."

            Your example would have been better if it had included a resident of a North or South American country other than the United States of America.

      • Without Loomis, radar probably would have taken at least another 5 years to develop into a working state.

        I seem to recall that there was a demo of a radar system that could lock on to floating barrage balloons and control a mortar. I saw an old film of it, it was pretty impressive even now, the gun moved the direction it was pointing in fired, moved onto the next, fired, and one by one each baloon exploded.

        I don't recall when that was, but it was definately in England during the war.

        I guess it depends on what you mean by "working state". Radar was most useful at first simply for detecting planes flying the Blitz, rather than the sort of stuff we use it for today. BTW I work at the organization formaly known as DERA, where a lot of the radar research took place and they still do a lot of radar and tracking work to this day.

        • I assume you are talking about WWII era stuff?

          My dad was in the US Army after Korea, and was a service technition on some of the guns they were developing at that time. Recently, he was telling me about some of it. Apparently, the prototypes had an analog computing element that was essentially mechanical. Those never made it into production because they wouldn't work well unless you kept the mechanism moving (probably either or both static friction and followers making little dents and getting stuck). The vaccume tube based stuff worked better. The first models could only track a straight line path.

    • Re:RADAR was invented by the brits! (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Here's the deal: You give us credit for RADAR, and we don't give you credit for the Spice Girls.

      Seems like a fair trade, doesn't it?
    • The review says in fact the British did things first but that Loomis managed to get all of the info from the British before moving the technology to a more practical level

      • WDYM, "more practical"? By the time Loomis started working on radar, the Brits had the system that was the deciding factor in the Battle of Britain in place.

    • Well, the review does mention that Loomis borrowed heavily from the British. Like many things in life, one thing is who invents something, and another who applies that technology for mass production. It doesn't have to be the same one, and I think the review correctly states this.
    • The critical component that Loomis helped produce was the Cavity magnetron, a device which gave orders of magntitude more microwave energy than the existing Klystron or travelling wave tubes.

      The Cavity Magentron was invented by Boot and Randall at the University of Birmingham (UK !!)

      The safe transport of probably the most precious cargo of WWII to the US and its subsequent rapid development to mass production is what won the war, not the atomic bomb, though it helped.

      The Magnetron and milli-metric radar is what gave us the ability to see 'U' boats. Seeing U boats allowed us to get shipping again. Shipping brought the supplies and troops from the US to start 'D' day.

      Steve
    • Isn't it funny that while RADAR was invented in Cambridge, Enlgish it was perfected in Cambridge, Massachusetts?

      Isn't it also suspicious that Loomis's secretary's name was Watson-Watts, and Watson-Watts secretary's name was Loomis?

      Coincidence, or just a freak event of the statistically unlikely?

  • This seems to be one of the more interesting books that's been reviewed on Slashdot. One I might actually go and look for at a book store.

    ~S

  • LORAN (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    long-range radio navigation
  • "...and have never even heard this man's name; which, it turns out, was the way he wanted it."

    Until his book ends up on Slashdot and then *EVERYONE* knows his name... =)

  • LoomCo (Score:3, Funny)

    by Poeir ( 637508 ) <poeir,geo&yahoo,com> on Friday January 24, 2003 @10:36AM (#5150976) Journal
    Alfred Loomis, "one of the most powerful men on Wall Street in the 1920's, a brilliant physicist, inventor of RADAR, LORAN, and the man who kicked off the race to build the atom bomb."

    Alfred Loomis? Are you sure that's not Ron Popeil [ronco.com]?

  • Not quite! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Draoi ( 99421 ) <{draiocht} {at} {mac.com}> on Friday January 24, 2003 @10:38AM (#5150983)
    he personally made RADAR a reality (borrowing heavily from British, who he convinced to give us all they knew)

    Not quite the same thing as "inventor of RADAR", as the reviewer stated. Credit where it's due .....

    • [Karma whoring for fun and profit]

      A google search threw up this link [about.com] which discusses in detail the invention of RADAR (invented by a Scotsman, BTW). Anyways ...

  • Radar in WWII (Score:4, Informative)

    by fruey ( 563914 ) on Friday January 24, 2003 @10:39AM (#5150997) Homepage Journal
    I had always thought RADAR played a minor role in WWII, but it turns out to have been extremely important, with nearly 25,000 units produced. It was conceived to help stop the German night raids on Britain

    It was conceived in order to see at night, actually. Radar will up show coastlines and cityscapes clearly at night, through cloud cover. The resolution was very poor, but it allowed the RAF to attack Germany. It was not so much a defensive gadget, it was more for a primitive night vision. Plane mounted radar was a decisive factor in the war in the air over Europe.

    Seeing German planes coming wasn't a problem, they could be detected by noise (they had to bomb from low down) and only stopped by launching bad surface to air missiles (there were of course plenty of coast stations armed with guns and launchers) or launching the RAF squadrons to attack them.

    Accuracy was the key really, and that is what RADAR allowed at night, or from above low clouds during the day.

    • Actually, radar made a big difference [geocities.com] during the Battle of Britain.

      Quote from that site: Britain had one great advantage, radar. Invented by a Scotsman, James Watson Watt, it was still rudimentary and often unreliable but it allowed Fighter Command to have a good idea of where German attacks were heading and how strong they were. It allowed the RAF to keep its planes on the ground until they were needed and then the fighter controllers would vector them in onto the attackers. It was a less than perfect system but it was the best in the world at that time, and it worked.

    • I was under the impression that the initial use for Radar was as an early-warning system set up on the English coast and islands/platforms in the English Channel to detect the presence of incoming German bombers. When the Brits had some advanced warning, they could put up a screen of fighters to meet the incoming bombers.

      I wonder if the platform that Sealand is built on is left over from this kind of duty?
      • You're probably right. Re-reading my post I said "RADAR was conceived" when now I think about it night vision over Germany was a cool side-effect, but I have seen historic footage of that on TV and remember a few pilots saying how what really helped their attacks was RADAR

    • RADAR: an interesting fact (Score:5, Interesting)

      by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Friday January 24, 2003 @11:03AM (#5151140) Journal
      To keep the Germans in the dark (pun intended) about the invention of RADAR, the British fed the Germans a clever disinformation story to explain the Royal Air Force's superior performance combatting the Luftwaffe's night-time incursions into British airspace.

      The reason spoon-fed to the Nazis (via British double agents) for the RAF's sucess was that their pilots were being fed lots of carrots, which helped to improve the aviators' eyesight and hence improve their accuracy.

      Of course, this was all rubbish but the myth that eating carrots can dramatically improve your eyesight still lives on today.

      The ruse played its part though - by the time the Germans discovered the true story, the Battle of Britain had been won.
      • I was taught in the militia in Canada that the carrots thing for night vision was taught to the public and British Airmen knowing full well some would be captured and tell the Germans.

        The TRUTH was they used red lights in the cockpit. They do not ruin night vision and the powers that be did not need the Germans adapting it.

        I remember my mom feeding me carrots as a kid, telling me it would improve my night vision.

        After we were taught this in the Canadian militia, we all got to strip and assemble the regiment's rifle.

        • "After we were taught this in the Canadian militia, we all got to strip and assemble the regiment's rifle."

          You all got naked and played with a long straight firm object? Maybe you should away from carrots.

      • But carrots ARE good for your eyesight... I mean, have you ever seen a rabbit wearing glasses?
    • Amazing! I can't spot find anything even remotely accurate in that description of the role of the RADAR in WWII. Where on earth did you get this?



      RADAR was, as the name suggests, designed for Detection and Ranging, and very luckily for Britain a significant number were integrated into Fighter Command, the sophisticated command and control network which received raw information from radar plots and rapidly assessed it to determine numbers and trajectories of incoming enemy aircraft. This allowed them to direct the use of Britains scarce resources of pilots and aircraft to the best possible effect. It played a huge part in the Battle of Britain where the Brits were greatly outnumbered by the Luftwaffe, but could respond by putting up the right number of fighters at the rigth time. Before the RADAR they would have had to guess.

    • Remember to that radar was instrumental in locating, tracking, and somewhat in the sinking of the Bismarck. It helped keep battle groups together, helped guide battleship and cruiser fire, helped locate u-boats. The largest and most effective use of radar during WW2 was at sea.

    • Radar was invented to help see German planes coming. Think about it. You're on an island. You have a lot of coast to watch. Sure, you could have guys on the ground with bionocluars, but they can only see so far. In comes radar, allowing the british to see the german formations forming up over france before they came in, and dispatch the RAF to be waiting for them when they came in.

  • Radar invention - more info (Score:3, Informative)

    by hcdejong ( 561314 ) <hobbes@xm s n e t . nl> on Friday January 24, 2003 @10:41AM (#5151014)

    Depending on your definition of 'invent', you can go as far back as 1880 [fi.edu] (finding that radio waves reflect) or 1924 [newcastle.edu.au](first succesful radio ranging) for the invention of radar.

    Practical radar systems were first built in 1935 by Watson-Watt.

    AFAI can determine, Loomis didn't get into the radar business until 1939 [yahoo.com], when he copeid all the information the British had.

  • The reviewer said he made RADAR a reality not that he invented it, even stating that he got information from the british. The summary said he invented it.
    • In fact, he did neither. AFAICT he did some useful optimisation work that helped miniaturise radar equipment so that it could be fitted to 'planes, but it was both invented and a reality long before he got his hands on the technology. Perhaps he made the first system with the name "RADAR"? The original British name for the system was "HFDF" (High Frequency Direction Finding, pronounced "huffduff").
      • The MIT Radiation Lab did an immense amount of work during World War II in research, development, design, testing and training for radar systems. It was second only to the Manhattan Project as a concentration of scientific and engineering talent. Their contribution to the war effort was very significant.

  • Bastard! (Score:3, Informative)

    by nick_davison ( 217681 ) on Friday January 24, 2003 @11:13AM (#5151197)
    and LORAN, which Loomis personally invented, guided all aircraft navigation in Europe, the Atlantic, and Pacific for the second half of the war.

    It even guided the Germans and Japanese? Bloody sell out!

    I realise this may come as a shock to some US readers, but the Second World War started in '39, not December 7th 1941. Half way through therefore being 41/42 as opposed to 1943. At that point the Germans were very definitely still bombing a lot and the Japanese (who'd been fairly busy for a decade already) were just getting started on Pearl Harbour.

    Don't get me wrong, everyone (well, except possibly the Germans and Japanese) appreciate you turning up at all, just stop taking so much damn offence when all the Europeans turn up to your wars (like Iraq) two years late.
    • I realize this may come as a shock to some Western readers, but the Second World War started in '37, when Japan invaded China, not September 1st 1939. Or do Chinese deaths and war not count?
    • Roosevelt helped as much as he could, within the constraints of American politics. The United States may have been "neutral" on paper, in practice it provided substantial assistance to the UK and USSR. Roosevelt conceived, and pushed through congress, the Lend-Lease Act, and ordered the Navy to patrol and escort merchant ships in the Western Atlantic.
    • Well it can't be helped if it takes us a long time to come out on one side of one of your European wars.

      -- You all look alike.

      Just a little joke.

      Jonathan
    • These days two years late equates to about a year and a half after the war is over.

      Actually it doesn't bother me that non-US nations would rather not be involved in US wars (their choice), but it does bother me when democracies that were created by US military action stand in the way when the US wants to create another democracy or two.
  • ...sold their stocks right before the stock market crash of 1929. Lots of people. They were the smart ones. Yep.

  • Interview and History on NPR (Score:3, Informative)

    by Cuthbert Calculus ( 629326 ) on Friday January 24, 2003 @11:32AM (#5151327)
    A little while ago NPR did a nice story on this--very interesting.

    Here's the link to the interview with the author... http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfI d=1146217 [npr.org]

  • Loomis Lab of Physics.

  • Alfred Loomis was a close friend of my dad's (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24, 2003 @11:47AM (#5151420)
    Chances are most people have never heard of Alfred Loomis because of the PR consultant he employed. His PR consultant's job was to make sure that the name Alfred Loomis never appeared in the newspapers.

    Alfred Loomis was a close friend of my dad's, so I grew up with a good many stories about him (he died before I was born so I never met him personally). I'd always hoped someone would manage to write a biography of him.

    My dad (who was a physicist) told me that during the depression there was a box you could check on the subscription form for Physical Review Letters (the most important Physics journal) which said something like "I can not afford to subscribe to this journal." If you checked that box, you would receive your subscription free of charge. Alfred Loomis's name never appeared anywhere in connection with this offer, but all those unpayable bills were sent to him and he paid them so that science could continue in some way during the depression years (government funding of basic research didn't become a big thing until after WWII).

  • A brilliant man, at parties he would often play several games of chess simultaneously, with his back to the boards and while maintaining lively conversation with his other guests.

    I'm sure I could play several games of chess at once.

    I'd never win a game though.
  • from the future who travelled back in time.

  • if I remember roccectly... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Hubert_Shrump ( 256081 ) <[cobranet] [at] [gmail.com]> on Friday January 24, 2003 @01:49PM (#5152446) Journal
    What Loomis did for the magnetron was instead of milling it out of a solid lump [tricky], he punched a series of plates (2D) and then stacked the plates up (3D) to make the same shape [less tricky].

    Just FYI, if I've got the right guy. I thought it was kinda neat.

  • MIT's RADAR building was recently razed to make way for an incredible new computer science building by Frank Gehry: the Ray and Maria Stata Center [mit.edu]. It was sad to see the old radar building go, although it was probably time. In MIT's grand tradition of naming everything with numbers, the radar building was called Building 20 [mit.edu].

  • Me too. (Score:2, Funny)

    by V4L1S ( 620027 )
    ...at parties he would often play several games of chess simultaneously, with his back to the boards and while maintaining lively conversation with his other guests.
    So what, I've done that lots of times. It was easy. Hell, I might have even won one of them, maybe. I was really drunk those times, so I can't be all that sure. Or something.

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