Accessory to War

by Neil DeGrasse Tyson

  125. John Dos Passos, “The House of Morgan,” Nineteen Nineteen, book 2 of U.S.A. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1932/1960), 293–94.

  126. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Farewell Address: Transcript,” Jan. 17, 1961, sec. IV, University of Virginia Miller Center, millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/january-17-1961-farewell-address (accessed Apr. 18, 2017).

  127. Matthew Weiner, creator, Mad Men, AMC, season 2, episode 10, “The Inheritance.”

  5. UNSEEN, UNDETECTED, UNSPOKEN

  1. Much more can be said about invisibility. Writers of fairy tales, devisers of magical potions, devotees of various faiths, practitioners of disembodied communication, fearful children, novelists, string theorists, mathematicians, musicians, the elderly, the homeless, the poor, those on the receiving end of prejudice and discrimination—all sorts of people have had other, multiple experiences of invisibility. For a far-ranging approach to the topic, see Philip Ball, Invisible: The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). The opening chapters examine concurrent developments in mysticism, magic, modern technology, and modern science; in a later chapter, “The People Who Can’t Be Seen,” Ball describes the invisibility of people who are deemed marginal as “a condition imposed by the selective vision of others, a manufactured blind spot painted over by the mind’s eye” (191). See also the discussion of multifarious invisibilities in the review of Ball’s book by Kathryn Schulz, “Sight Unseen,” New Yorker, Apr. 13, 2015, 75–79. Schulz makes the point that “[a]lmost everything around us is imperceptible, almost all the rest is maddeningly difficult to perceive, and what remains scarcely amounts to anything. . . . As for the part that exists in or near our own planet, the stuff that is visible to us in any literal sense: that is a decimal attenuating out almost to nothing, a speck of dust in the cosmic hinterlands” (78).

  2. Antony van Leeuwenhoeck, “Observations communicated to the Publisher by Mr. Antony van Leeuwenhoeck, in a Dutch Letter of the 9th of Octob. 1676. here English’d: Concerning little Animals by him observed in Rain- Well- Sea- and Snow water as also in water wherein Pepper had lain infused,” Philosophical Transac. Royal Society 1677:12 (Mar. 25, 1677), 828–29, digitized pages at rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/12/133/821.full.pdf+html (accessed Jan. 17, 2018).

  3. The number 7 had carried rich associations since well before Newton’s day, including the seven notes in the heptatonic scale, the seven “classical planets,” and the seven days of the week. See, e.g., Robert Finlay, “Weaving the Rainbow: Visions of Color in World History,” J. World History 18:4 (2007), 387; June W. Allison, “Cosmos and Number in Aeschylus’ Septem,” Hermes 137:2 (2009), 130.

  4. “Refrangibility” simply means refraction. A light ray that is refracted is being deflected, or bent, from the straight path it would otherwise travel on. What causes the bending is some kind of surface that the light ray encounters, or some change in the medium through which it has been passing. Here is Newton on the necessity of experiments: “You know, the proper Method for inquiring after the properties of things is, to deduce them from Experiments. And I told you, that the Theory, which I propounded, was evinced to me, not by inferring ’tis thus because not otherwise, that is, not by deducing it only from a confutation of contrary suppositions, but by deriving it from Experiments concluding positively and directly. The way therefore to examin it is, by considering, whether the Experiments which I propound do prove those parts of the Theory, to which they are applyed; or by prosecuting other Experiments which the Theory may suggest for its examination.” Isaac Newton, “A Serie’s of Quere’s propounded by Mr. Isaac Newton, to be determin’d by Experiments, positively and directly concluding his new Theory of Light and Colours; and here recommended to the Industry of the Lovers of Experimental Philosophy, as they were generously imparted to the Publisher in a Letter of the said Mr. Newtons of July 8. 1672,” Philosophical Transac. Royal Society 85 (July 15, 1672), 5004.

  5. “. . . for about a 1/4 or 1/3 of an Inch at either end of the Spectrum the Light of the Clouds seemed to be a little tinged with red and violet, but so very faintly, that I suspected that Tincture might either wholly, or in great Measure arise from some Rays of the Spectrum scattered irregularly by some Inequalities in the Substance and Polish of the Glass . . .” “Exper. 3” in Sir Isaac Newton, Knt., Opticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light, 4th ed. corr. (London: William Innys, 1730), Project Gutenberg Ebook 33504 (2010), 30, www.gutenberg.org/files/33504/33504-h/33504-h.htm (accessed Apr. 19, 2017).

  6. Newton, Opticks, Qu. 25, first sentence.

  7. William Herschel, “Investigation of the Powers of the prismatic Colours, to heat and illuminate Objects; with Remarks, that prove the different Refrangibility of radiant Heat . . . ,” Philosophical Transac. Royal Society 90 (1800), 272. Writing several decades later, another Englishman described Herschel’s finding in Victorian language: “The experiment proved that, besides its luminous rays, the sun emitted others of low refrangibility, which possessed great calorific power, but were incompetent to excite vision.” J. Tyndall, “On Calorescence,” Philosophical Transac. Royal Society 156 (1866), 1. There is also evidence that seventeenth-century French and Italian researchers had begun, in a much less organized way, to investigate the invisible rays that produced heat; see James Lequeux, “Early Infrared Astronomy,” J. Astronomical History and Heritage 12:2 (2009), 125–26. The term “infrared” did not come into use until about 1880; see S. D. Price, History of Space-based Infrared Astronomy and the Air Force Infrared Celestial Backgrounds Program, AFRL-RV-HA-TR-2008-1039 (Hanscom AFB, MA: Air Force Research Laboratory, 2008), 36.

  8. In early 2016 a detector called Advanced LIGO first measured a kindred phenomenon: gravitational waves, made up not of photons but of gravitons, with wavelengths about the size of the system that generated them—up to a thousand kilometers. LIGO was built to detect the workings of gravity, not light, on a cosmic scale, and it marks a totally new era in astrophysical detection.

  9. As the first invisible form of electromagnetic radiation to be discovered, radio waves—enabling “communications [to be] borne on the pervasive wireless ether”—became, like the newly discovered invisible magic of electricity, proof and beneficiary of centuries of spiritualist leanings and occult assumptions. Ball, Invisible, 101 and chap. 4, “Rays That Bridge Worlds,” 90–134.

  10. C. J. Seymour Baker, “Correspondence: Camouflage,” J. Royal Society of Arts (Mar. 19, 1920), 298; Michael Taussig, “Zoology, Magic, and Surrealism in the War on Terror,” Critical Inquiry 34:S2 (Winter 2008), S98–S116.

  11. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Lionel Giles, chap. 1, “Laying Plans,” sec. 18–19, in The Strategy Collection: The Art of War, On War, The Prince (Waxkeep Publishing, 2013), loc. 11794.

  12. Paul Daniel Emanuele, “Vegetius and the Roman Navy: Translation and Commentary, Book Four,” 31–46, “Part II: Translation, XXXVII,” 28 (MA thesis, Department of Classics, University of British Columbia, 1974).

  13. Ball, Invisible, 241.

  14. Claudia T. Covert, “Art at War: Dazzle Camouflage,” Art Documentation: J. Art Libraries Society of North America 26:2 (Fall 2007), 50–51. The French created their camouflage service in 1915, the British in 1916, and the Americans in 1917. Charlie Chaplin adopted the tree disguise for the 1918 movie Shoulder Arms, in which “he ran around in a tree costume knocking down German soldiers at the front” (Ball, Invisible, 242).

  15. Ball, Invisible, 244–50.

  16. The first three examples are cited by Ball in Invisible: A British stage magician who worked with the British Army during World War I, in an attempt to hide aircraft from searchlights, painted the planes with varnish that he then covered over with black felt powder before it had dried (249); a Japanese engineer, Susumu Tachi, has created a material called “retro-reflectum,” made up of small light-reflecting beads, which transmits to the front of an object the exact view from its back (229–30); a skyscr
aper being designed for South Korea is to be surrounded by outward-facing cameras and coated with LEDs that project improved versions of what the cameras record (231–32). The multiple-lens approach to disappearing was developed at the University of Rochester; it relies on four standard lenses of different focal lengths arranged in a line and separated by carefully calculated distances, www.rochester.edu/newscenter/watch-rochester-cloak-uses-ordinary-lenses-to-hide-objects-across-continuous-range-of-angles-70592/ (accessed July 19, 2015).

  17. Chen-Pang Yeang, “The Study of Long-Distance Radio-Wave Propagation, 1900–1919,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 33:2 (2003), 369–403.

  18. The initial cost of a call to London was $75 for the first three minutes; after seven more years of intensive R & D, the initial cost of a call to Tokyo was $39 for three minutes. See AT&T, “The History of AT&T,” www.corp.att.com/history (accessed Apr. 19, 2017).

  19. Karl G. Jansky, “Directional Studies of Atmospherics at High Frequencies,” Proc. Institute of Radio Engineers 20 (1932), 1920; Karl G. Jansky, “Electrical Disturbances Apparently of Extraterrestrial Origin,” Proc. IRE 21:10 (Oct. 1933), 1387–98.

  20. Addressing the 94th meeting of the American Astronomical Society on March 23, 1956, Cyril M. Jansky Jr., also a radio engineer, called his brother Karl’s work on noise “in effect a wedding ceremony” between pure science and applied science, pointing out that he himself (and by implication, most people working in S & T) “used to define a pure scientist as one who if he saw a practical application of what he was doing somehow felt contaminated by commercialism and an applied scientist as one who if he could not see a practical application of his work would lose interest.” C. M. Jansky Jr., “My Brother Karl Jansky and His Discovery of Radio Waves from Beyond the Earth,” Cosmic Search 1:4, www.bigear.org/vol1no4/jansky.htm (accessed Nov. 3, 2015).

  21. Grote Reber, “A Play Entitled the Beginning of Radio Astronomy,” J. Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 82:3 (June 1988), 94, adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1988JRASC..82...93R (accessed Apr. 19, 2017).

  22. For Jansky’s own detailed description of this apparatus, see Jansky, “Directional Studies,” 4–7.

  23. Lisa Grossman, “New Questions about Arecibo’s Future Swirl in the Wake of Hurricane Maria,” ScienceNews, Sept. 29, 2017, www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-public/new-questions-about-arecibos-future-swirl-wake-hurricane-maria (accessed Oct. 28, 2017).

  24. Cheng Yingqi and Yang Jun, “Massive Telescope’s 30-ton ‘Retina’ Undergoes Final Test,” China Daily, Nov. 23, 2015, www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015-11/23/content_22509826.htm (accessed Apr. 19, 2017).

  25. Initially the British called their version RDF, or radio direction finding. See the brief, eloquent explanation of radar by the UK’s WWII radar maven Robert Watson-Watt, in J. T. Randall, “Radar and the Magnetron,” J. Royal Society of Arts 94:4715 (Apr. 12, 1946), 304.

  26. “[B]y the use of [a] generator of stationary waves and receiving apparatus properly placed . . . , it is practicable to transmit intelligible signals or to control or actuate at will any one or all of such apparatus for many other important and valuable purposes, as for . . . ascertaining the relative position of a body or distance of the same with reference to a given point or for determining the course of a moving object, such as a vessel at sea, the distance traversed by the same or its speed, or for producing many other useful effects at a distance dependent on the intensity, wave length, direction or velocity of movement.” Nikola Tesla, “Art of Transmitting Electrical Energy Through the Natural Medium,” US Patent 787,412; applica-tion filed May 16, 1900; renewed June 17, 1902; specification dated Apr. 18, 1905, www.teslauniverse.com/nikola-tesla/patents/us-patent-787412-art-transmitting-electrical-energy-through-natural-mediums (accessed Apr. 19, 2017). In 1917 Tesla proposed that a submarine could be detected by the same wireless invention of his that had already been used to detect underground ore—a statement similar to Marconi’s in 1922. “Nikola Tesla Tells of Country’s War Problems,” New York Herald, Apr. 15, 1917, www.teslauniverse.com/nikola-tesla/articles/nikola-tesla-tells-countrys-war-problems (accessed Apr. 19, 2017). Re early efforts in multiple countries, see Louis Brown, A Radar History of World War II: Technical and Military Imperatives (Bristol, UK, and Philadelphia, PA: Institute of Physics Publishing, 1999), 40–49.

  27. Quoted in Andrew J. Butrica, To See the Unseen: A History of Planetary Radar Astronomy, NASA History Series: NASA SP-4218 (Washington, DC: NASA, 1996), 1, ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19960045321.pdf (accessed Apr. 19, 2017).

  28. Butrica, See the Unseen, 1–2.

  29. Brown, Radar History of WWII, ix.

  30. Brown, Radar History of WWII, xi.

  31. For a detailed look at the many roadblocks in the Soviet Union as well as the competing technologies, see John Erickson, “Radio-location and the Air Defence Problem: The Design and Development of Soviet Radar 1934–40,” Science Studies 2:3 (July 1972), 241–63. Re sound detection in early-warning systems as early as 1917, including “acoustical mirrors” post–World War I, see David Zimmerman, Britain’s Shield: Radar and the Defeat of the Luftwaffe (Stroud, UK: Amberly, 2013), 23–50; the book also extensively addresses the political and scientific background to radar development in Britain. Roadblocks to the development of shortwave radar in Britain as well as Germany are discussed in Bernard Lovell, “The Cavity Magnetron in World War II: Was the Secrecy Justified?” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 58:3 (Sept. 2004), 286–91. Also see Brown, Radar History of World War II, 40–91, including this grim mid-1930s example from Germany: The Kriegsmarine ordered engineers working on an early radar system to abandon the cathode-ray tube because the tube was too delicate for shipboard use. Not long afterward, a ship carrying a prototype radar set with such a tube went down; the entire crew died, but the cathode-ray tube continued to function (75). Re infrared, Brown points out that although infrared detection became widespread after the war, its wartime applications were severely limited by the fact that good semiconductors did not yet exist and the photoelectric effect had not yet been fully mastered (41).

  32. Brown, Radar History of World War II, 33–49. See also Zimmerman, Britain’s Shield, 53–55.

  33. Zimmerman, Britain’s Shield, 65–70, presents detailed information re defensive measures.

  34. A German historian of technology writes that “there was no intensive interaction between the scientists and the services, the level of integration of components into a system was low, and operational efficiency was weak”; Walter Kaiser, “A Case Study in the Relationship of History of Technology and of General History: British Radar Technology and Neville Chamberlain’s Appeasement Policy,” Icon 2 (1996), 38. Re the extreme secrecy, Brown notes, in his caption to a 1938 photograph originally included in the 1939 edition of a German compilation of the world’s navy ships, that the ship conspicuously displayed a Seetakt antenna (a large, pale, rather flat box) in front of the foremast, but that “the photograph was passed for publication by naval authorities, all kept in the dark about the new technique and, of course, unable to recognize the apparent mattress as the mark of a secret weapon” (Radar History of World War II, 32).

  35. Brown, Radar History of World War II, 40–96, 280–81.

  36. Zimmerman, Britain’s Shield, 184, 186–88; Kaiser, “Case Study: British Radar,” 34–35, 37; Brown, Radar History of World War II, 64, 82–83. Kaiser writes, “The reasons for the extraordinary achievements of British radar technology lie pre-eminently in an alert military policy and a far-sighted strategy.” Britain’s approach was to form “organized cadres of scientists to assist the services.” In 1937–38 the government compiled a list of skilled workers suitable for employment in war production; in addition, with input from the Royal Society, universities, and technical institutions, it developed a registry of highly qualified volunteers for war service. “The creation and successful use of institutional structures to direct the difficult process of transforming scienc
e into technology was an essential,” Kaiser argues.

  37. Robert Watson-Watt was the Radio Research Board’s most visible actor in the effort to develop Britain’s radar effort. Much of the work of his Radio Research Station at Slough had to do with the ionosphere. On Feb. 12, 1935, just two weeks after being contacted by the Air Ministry’s director of scientific research, he sent a secret memorandum to the ministry titled “Detection of Aircraft by Radio Methods” and noted in his cover letter, “It turns out so favourably that I am still nervous as to whether we have not got a power of ten wrong, but even that would not be fatal.” The final draft was titled “Detection and Location of Aircraft by Radio Methods.” One of Watson-Watt’s biographers called the memorandum “the political birth of radar”; Watson-Watt himself went so far as to claim it as “marking the birth of radar.” Butrica, See the Unseen, 3 n.9. For the cover letter, see “Radar Personalities: Sir Robert Watson-Watt,” www.radarpages.co.uk/people/images/wwfig3.jpg (accessed Apr. 19, 2017). After the war, Watson-Watt himself recast the memo into plain English at the beginning of a very readable article, “Radar Defense Today—and Tomorrow,” Foreign Affairs 32:2 (Jan. 1954), 230–43, esp. 231–34. For a later technical, but also readable, analysis of the memorandum, see B. A. Austin, “Precursors to Radar: The Watson-Watt Memorandum and the Daventry Experiment,” Int. J. Electrical Engineering Education 36 (1999), 364–72.

  38. Zimmerman, Britain’s Shield, 208–35, 263–79.

  39. Brown, Radar History of World War II, 49, 56, 287.

  40. See, e.g., Lovell, “Cavity Magnetron in World War II,” 283–94; J. T. Randall, “Radar and the Magnetron,” J. Royal Society of Arts 94:4715 (Apr. 12, 1946), 313; Butrica, See the Unseen, 3–6. Raytheon made 80 percent of them, according to “Raytheon Company History,” www.raytheon.com/ourcompany/history/ (accessed Jan. 17, 2016).

  41. The failure of intelligence in connection with the attack of Pearl Harbor, as well as questions of the role played by insufficient communication between branches of the armed services, by President Roosevelt, and by “technical surprise,” are fraught topics. Specifically regarding radar, however, Butrica states in an extensively footnoted paragraph: “A mobile SCR-270, placed on Oahu as part of the Army’s Aircraft Warning System, spotted incoming Japanese airplanes nearly 50 minutes before they bombed United States installations. . . . The warning was ignored, because an officer mistook the radar echoes for an expected flight of B-17s” (Butrica, See the Unseen, 5). Elsewhere, citing other sources, historian Alvin Coox states: “Two Army enlisted men tinkering with a new radar set detected the first sizable air squadrons, but that crucial intelligence was dismissed because unarmed B-17 Flying Fortresses were expected from California that morning” (“The Pearl Harbor Raid Revisited,” J. Amer.–East Asian Relations 3:3—Special Issue: December 7, 1941: The Pearl Harbor Attack [Fall 1994], 220).