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Old 11th Dec 2020, 8:54 pm   #101
peter_scott
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

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I bought one of the RSGB's books about one of the people involved in early radar. Boy was I disappointed. Lots on family life and getting posted to different places, lots of words on how secret it was, no actual information on that 'it'. All human interest, no technical interest. A balanced mixture would have been nice. Two slices of bread do not a sandwich make. The RSGB keep advertising lots of this sort of book, but I'm thoroughly discouraged. I feel like I got done!

David
I sat and watched just such a webinar on Monday evening on the air crash that resulted in the death of Alan Blumlein. Unfortunately it was clearly not designed for the audience of IET engineers present. A great disappointment!

Peter
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Old 11th Dec 2020, 9:11 pm   #102
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Richard I've enjoyed reading the comments of you and others re, I suppose, the philosophy of and possible outcomes, re vintage technology in the future as I am more or less on the route of Chain Home here in Bexhill. I knew a little about GEE system but your explanation about the lack of actual technical info [shades of Enigma perhaps?] has focused me on the subject. It was indeed a very significant national defence system. Could it be there is something buried in a government archive still? I wouldn't think it was Top Secret any more.
I think the lack of information about GEE Mk.I is one of those very annoying "quirks" of history. The information as far as anyone knows has been lost - though it won't surprise me if a copy of the manual (S.D.0208) turns up somewhere obscure - like Belgium!

I have spend several days trawling all the GEE related files in the main government archive - at Kew - as have others. Indeed I have much of the material there available now as photos, which I am happy to share with anyone interested. Most of it is extremely boring stuff - just routine letters between TRE and suppliers for the most part. Here and there is a meeting report where something significant was decided. Perhaps most interesting are the schematics of "prototype GEE".

GEE Mk.I got "lost" because the whole period was extremely intense. Britain was hanging on to its survival by its finger tips. Invasion had been averted, but no-one was sure that a second attempt wasn't just around the corner. The flavour I get from reading the correspondence is that everyone was desperate to make this work, because bombing without navigation was a waste of time. Nearly all bombs missed their targets by many miles.

Its interesting that when the official history of "RAF Signals" came to be written up, the author of the chapter on GEE Mk.I couldn't produce a photo of the equipment - they had to resort to putting in a photo of GEE Mk.II (which had its own chapter anyway).

Its definitely not top secret, and I think any element of secrecy went out the window in 1941 when a GEE-equipped plane (Wellington I think) was lost on one of the early raids over Germany. After the war, GEE continued being a very useful navigation system, albeit pretty local to UK and our corner of Europe. Plans were made to roll it out further afield, but I think they were shelved because the Americans brought out LORAN.

As an aside here, the American back in the very early 40s, were rather miffed that the British had beaten to the finish line on being the first to produce a working hyperbolic navigation system. Its hard now to imagine (with all our satnavs, also hyperbolic I believe) just how revolutionary having a machine to "tell you where you are" was back in 1941. Whereas 2-way radio was - yawn - pretty routine stuff for those with access to it - this was brand new, never seen before, technology. Shame that Britain couldn't make a bit of a thing about inventing it - no doubt the Americans think they invented hyperbolic navigation like everything else!

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Did you see my reference to Peter Scott's link [post 7*] on the "Facebook Old CRT's" thread
No - but now you have pointed in me in that direction I will look it up. Thanks!

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There's also a mention of [for the radar purist] of an eight page detailed description on GEE theory in
"Radar a Wartime Miracle" by Latham and Stobbs but you've probably seen that!
Yes, I have that book. I think its another one of those one David was complaining about - mainly "social history" rather than technical hardcore!


Richard
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Old 11th Dec 2020, 10:31 pm   #103
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Probably one of the best of the radar history books in my view is Lovell's 'Echoes of War', the story of the development of H2S.
Not only was he there as the leader of the team developing it, but he was a very competent author. All of his books are extremely readable.

Andy
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Old 11th Dec 2020, 11:05 pm   #104
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Default Re: The future of vintage electronics ?

I did read one of the Beaufighter Nightfighter memoirs in which they described the various advances in radar and the ability to find and follow the enemy in some detail from a practical perspective. In a cross-pollinating frame of mind, I wonder if an expert reading of these 'user accounts' would inform an understanding of how the equipment functioned, based on the unfiltered interpretations of the airmen using the things. Reading how the set behaved, I imagine hopefully that it would be possible for an expert to infer 'ah, of course they used a pentode stage to do...'

I am also aware that anything sufficiently advanced is magic, which in my state of limited theoretical knowledge is what I still consider this 1940s technology to be.
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Old 12th Dec 2020, 10:16 am   #105
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I did read one of the Beaufighter Nightfighter memoirs in which they described the various advances in radar and the ability to find and follow the enemy in some detail from a practical perspective. In a cross-pollinating frame of mind, I wonder if an expert reading of these 'user accounts' would inform an understanding of how the equipment functioned, based on the unfiltered interpretations of the airmen using the things. Reading how the set behaved, I imagine hopefully that it would be possible for an expert to infer 'ah, of course they used a pentode stage to do...'

I am also aware that anything sufficiently advanced is magic, which in my state of limited theoretical knowledge is what I still consider this 1940s technology to be.

Radar (from the little I know of it) is highly technical, and demands an excellent grasp of advanced mathematics (at least to do the design work). That is why the first radar teams were not made up of practising electronics engineers (at least not to do the hard theoretical design work) - they were theoretical physicists, like Bernard Lovell. Wikipedia notes the following about his training and background before he started on radar:

"Lovell studied physics at the University of Bristol obtaining a Bachelor of Science degree in 1934, and a PhD in 1936 for his work on the electrical conductivity of thin films."

He was fairly typical from what I have read. No doubt he picked up a good grasp of electronics "along the way". And indeed, most of the books on the "radar story" focus on the easier to see problem of how to translate the maths (which is never set out in those books) into actual hardware. They were exploiting the very edge of what was possible at the time. Hence the grabbing of the most advanced devices at the time, like the EF50 valve and the magnetron, which were absolutely critical to making the kit work well enough to be of some use.

To answer your first point about working back from the "story books" to "how the equipment functioned" - no I don't think that's possible. At least not in the detail I think David and I are referring to. The only way you can do that is to take the original documents (if you can find them), look at schematics, waveforms, and preferably get your hands on real, working kit. But as I said, in this radar and early electronics field, that is near to impossible. There's no complete and working H2S radar in existence as far as I know. Duxford Radio Society did manage a complete airborne GEE Mk.II system - but as referred to elsewhere, that's all been put away in a cupboard for the foreseeable future - and the DRS would never let people like me near their kit anyway.


Richard
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Old 12th Dec 2020, 10:44 am   #106
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What not even in disguise Richard? Dis Guy's after our GEE Set! You don't look like a threat. I would be very interested to hear your opinion of Roy Taylor's "book" re Shoreham Radar Station. I was quite impressed but what do I know really! I've mentioned elsewhere that my brother-in-law lives there so that was another thing that caught my attention. It all started with a reference to War Time electronic surplus having been dumped in the vicinity-something that did definitely happen after WW2!

Dave
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Old 12th Dec 2020, 11:49 am   #107
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that's all been put away in a cupboard for the foreseeable future - and {Organisation X} would never let people like me near their kit anyway.
This is revealing. A well-run collection should encourage access, research and collaboration by bona fide historians. Obviously granting access has curatorial constraints and draws upon resources that might be in short supply. But the fact that you don't expect the organisation to be welcoming to someone with a legitimate interest and knowledge to offer, is disappointing and highly relevant to the theme of this thread.

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To answer your first point about working back from the "story books" to "how the equipment functioned" - no I don't think that's possible. At least not in the detail I think David and I are referring to.
Certainly one can't reconstruct a radio navigation system solely from oblique references in memoirs, but they can be important nonetheless. One of my interests is theatre lighting controls, which in the 1970s were using technologies as disparate as motorised rheostats and 16-bit minicomputers. Very little remains of the high-end systems, either in the form of hardware or technical information. An example is Lightboard, Strand's flagship control designed for and first installed at the National Theatre in 1976. No examples survive and only partial documentation, but the people who conceived and designed it are still very much with us. The lead designer has recently been working to re-construct a block diagram and a framework of the code both for the PDP-11 at its core and the associated application-specific computer that handled all the real-time number-crunching under control of the DEC.

Systems of this kind that have a rich and revealing user-interface tend to allow many operational parameters to leach out into the users' collective experience. One only has to leaf through battered copies of lighting plots or listen to directors' tales of frustration with some cue or another, and surprising amounts of useful insight bubble through about what was going on in the machine room.

I particularly like this kind of detective work, not least because it ties in lots more people, and they frequently have much more to offer than the specific details being sought.
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Old 12th Dec 2020, 12:01 pm   #108
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What not even in disguise Richard? Dis Guy's after our GEE Set! You don't look like a threat. I would be very interested to hear your opinion of Roy Taylor's "book" re Shoreham Radar Station. I was quite impressed but what do I know really! I've mentioned elsewhere that my brother-in-law lives there so that was another thing that caught my attention. It all started with a reference to War Time electronic surplus having been dumped in the vicinity-something that did definitely happen after WW2!

Dave
Dave,

yes, I have downloaded a copy of the book following your directions, and am engaged in reading it. I will try and give some more feedback on it in due course. Maybe it warrants a post in its own right.

It always worth knowing about these somewhat obscure museums (Marlipins Museum in Shoreham) because sometimes they hold very rare items, without even being aware that they are rare, or of potential interest to researchers. If the GEE Mk.I manual ever surfaces, I suspect its going to turn up in a place like this!



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Old 12th Dec 2020, 12:14 pm   #109
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that's all been put away in a cupboard for the foreseeable future - and {Organisation X} would never let people like me near their kit anyway.
This is revealing. A well-run collection should encourage access, research and collaboration by bona fide historians. Obviously granting access has curatorial constraints and draws upon resources that might be in short supply. But the fact that you don't expect the organisation to be welcoming to someone with a legitimate interest and knowledge to offer, is disappointing and highly relevant to the theme of this thread.
Lucien,

well, part of the problem here (in this recent year) is that the DRS has been thrown off the Duxford site by the IWM. There is a long thread about this here.

I think I applied to join around 2012. It took them months to respond, and when they finally did, it was a "no". That came some three years after I took a very public stand against scamming and thieving in vmars - in other words I was a "whistleblower" - and whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, many organisations won't accept anyone they perceive to be a "troublemaker". I never got a reason from DRS - but I suspect that is what behind their rejection.

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I particularly like this kind of detective work, not least because it ties in lots more people, and they frequently have much more to offer than the specific details being sought.
Yes, indeed. I like it too. I like working in teams. Trouble is that this particular interest/hobby is populated mostly by "loners" - the famous "solitary guy in his shed". Such a person can do an amazing amount, and some do (as witnessed by so much of the activity reported on this forum). However the big projects - like recreation of large systems (like Colossus or your "Lightboard" project) - can't realistically be done just by some bod in a shed. It needs extensive teamwork. Finding true "team players", who are happy to work as volunteers has proven very difficult in my experience (over some 20+ years).


Richard
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Old 12th Dec 2020, 7:55 pm   #110
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What not even in disguise Richard? Dis Guy's after our GEE Set! You don't look like a threat. I would be very interested to hear your opinion of Roy Taylor's "book" re Shoreham Radar Station. I was quite impressed but what do I know really! I've mentioned elsewhere that my brother-in-law lives there so that was another thing that caught my attention. It all started with a reference to War Time electronic surplus having been dumped in the vicinity-something that did definitely happen after WW2!

Dave
Dave,

I have now read at least the first part of the book, and I would say it gives a good flavour of wartime life in a very specialist role. Extreme secrecy was expected - or rather demanded. Much the same, say, as Bletchley Park, and no doubt other radar/radio sites scattered around the country.

Like all these local history books, it contains lots of fascinating detail, but is very parochial. No doubt that suits a book mostly read by the people local to Shoreham. The narrow view is highlighted by one comment that I spotted - see the pic on page 29 - the sketch of a GEE Receiver Set. The comment underneath says: "A sight very familiar to any GEE operator. "

In reality this view of the GEE equipment shown was familiar to a very small subset of "GEE operators". Most of them used the airborne equipment, obviously in a plane (though it could be used on the ground too). I think it extremely unlikely that many (any?) of those many hundreds (probably thousands) of airborne GEE operators would ever get to see what a GEE ground station looked like. No "need to know" for one thing. And the secrecy, at least during the war, would make it near impossible.

But of course, to the person who drew that view of the GEE ground equipment, and to the staff who manned the station at Truleigh Hill, what they had was "GEE". The would again, probably never see the airborne side of it - which again is probably all that most people on here have ever seen. I've only seen a bit of the GEE ground equipment once - I think it was in the Science Museum in London.

That illustrates rather nicely how books like this give you a detailed, excellent view of the bit of the system, the world etc that they knew about. It tells you nothing at all how what they were doing fitted into a bigger picture. (Of course, other books do fill in the blanks - and the authors rightly refer anyone interest to the Latham and Stubbs book (Radar - A Wartime Miracle)

The book does a good job of conveying the extreme boredom of keeping a GEE ground station on the air. Watching paint dry hardly touches it! And then the panic if something actually failed....

And it also has some nice photos of the GEE and CHEL ground equipment, which are hardly common or widely available. A good addition to the wider history.

One last thing I picked up from the book - but which I don't think it says explicitly, is how Britain was totally taken over by the military in the war years, and for quite a while afterwards. Truleigh Hill was shut down in 1957 I think - I was then 2 years old. Military installations - and military attitudes (secrecy, and a sort of "entitlement") were everywhere from the war until at least the early 60s. Its hard now for people who weren't there - or haven't read the history in detail to appreciate that. This book is full of it.


Richard
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Old 18th Dec 2020, 10:40 pm   #111
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Thank you Richard. that was kinder than I expected. As you say it gives a personal view but maybe not entirely non-technical? I suppose the operators were the last ones to know the bigger picture really, as at Bletchley perhaps? I'd ended up on the south coast by accident, were they built underground command and control centres in the Chain Home cold war period, employing maybe hundreds of people but nobody seems to recall it locally A UFO was tracked along the channel by the RAF [circa 1956]. Probably the Russians of course . Yes places like Dungeness. Newhaven and Shoreham may have some answers. I started out looking for an earlier Marconi Station originally!

Dave W

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Old 18th Dec 2020, 10:57 pm   #112
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Re post 109, did you ever see "Behind The Scenes At The Museum" [2012]. Mentioned on "Bletchley Park The Parts The Public Do Not See"" Brunel thread 12/5/20-Post 15*

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