My ego seems to need a boost today, so here comes a personal puff piece.

It’s all true, so you

may find it soporific.

In 1949 when I was a young radio engineer (two years out of college) with the National
Security Agency in Washington D.C., I got a new assignment. First I was given a Secret briefing
on World War Two submarine warfare. (Years later I read it all described in detail in Electronics
Magazine, so after that I could discuss it openly.) I was told that during World War Two, the
location and identity of German submarines in the Atlantic depended largely on the U. S. Navy’s
interception of the subs’ radio transmissions. Using radio-direction finders our Navy could
quickly spot where a sub was, but identifying which sub it was a challenge. Only by knowing
which German subs were located where could our military analysts evaluate the size and strategy
of the German sub fleet and predict its future locations and tactics. This intelligence greatly
improved the safety of the hundreds of Allied ships crossing the Atlantic in convoys each month
to support the War in Europe.
Late in the War, I was told, our Navy used a technique called “radio finger-printing” (RFP),
where the characteristics of the subs’ transmitted radio signals were photographically recorded in
real time for visual analysis. Tape recorders were not available, and wire recorders were useless
in this application. So in Navy shipboard radio rooms an oscilloscope and a 35mm movie camera
were set up for RFP, so that when a German sub transmission was tuned in, its signal was
displayed on the scope and photographed. The film was then developed and printed to make a
long, narrow strip for visual analysis by specialists using a magnifier.
I was told that several signal characteristics could distinguish one sub from another. Most
significant was the sub radio operator’s “fist,” meaning the particular way he always handled his
telegraph key to make his Morse-code dots and dashes. No two sub radio operators had exactly
the same fist, so our Navy analysts could identify the fist of many German operators after a
glance at the photo strip. Also there were other sub-to-sub differences that showed up on the
photo strip -- for example, the power-supply ripple on the signal and the rise time and overshoot
of the leading edge of each dot and dash.
By war’s end the Navy’s RFP system had established a sizable data bank on German subs,
with tabulated signal characteristics of each particular vessel. Now in 1949, my boss told me,
NSA was getting ready to let a civilian contract for a standard RFP system, and my task would be
to write the detailed technical specification for that new system. Of course German subs were no
longer of concern, but other countries’ subs were, he said.
I was shown a typical RFP photo strip, on which the signal image covered only half the film
width. I was told that because the analysts wanted to have it twice that large to better reveal
details, we will need to employ an oscilloscope having a display twice as large as the five-inch
scope in use. Having looked into that, my boss said, he concluded that a new scope having a
giant, ten-inch display would have to be developed and would cost many times that of a five-inch
and would have several times the volume, weight, and power requirement -- all major concerns
for shipboard equipment. For the giant-scope system, he said, the estimated development cost
would exceed a quarter-million dollars. He mentioned all this in passing, as though there were no
other alternatives.
At that time my main hobby was photography, so I did some questioning. I found that the
RFP systems currently in use employed a military-standard 35mm military camera and lens.
With that set-up I saw that they were indeed limited to getting an on-film image that was only
half the width of the film. My boss said he and others had of course questioned whether there
was a better military camera or lens for the RFP job, and they had always gotten a decisive “No.”
I immediately realized that all we would have to do was to extend the lens a few millimeters
and move the camera a little closer to achieve the desired larger image size. I explained to the
boss that the camera would simply require a lens extender, which could be a plain, threaded,
metal cylinder could easily be machined in a few minutes.
I then quoted him from memory (which I can do even now) the classic camera-focus
formula: when the object is in focus, the reciprocal of the lens’ focal length equals the reciprocal
of the image distance from the lens plus the reciprocal of the object distance from the lens. I then
quickly calculated the size of the required lens extender -- I think it was around 15 mm or so -- to
produce a 24 mm image using the five-inch oscilloscope, and handed him the equation and my
solution of it.
He found it hard to believe me. It was too much for him to accept on the spot from a very
junior engineer like me, but as a scientist he couldn’t ignore a new, conflicting technical input.
(This man later became CEO of the Ampex Corporation.) He said he would “research it” that
night.
At work the next morning he told me, “You are absolutely right. I checked it out in one of
my college textbooks. A small lens extender will produce the image size we want. We will not
need a larger oscilloscope.”
Having thought it about overnight, I told him we could probably use an even smaller,
cheaper scope, perhaps one as small as one-inch, and still fill the negative with its signal image.
We would just need the proper-length extension tube. I soon found out, however, that the
smallest standard military scope was three-inch. That was the size we went with in the final RFP
set-up I specified.
The new RFP system turned out to be even smaller and lighter than those used during the
War.

Here was an instance where near-sightedness nearly prevailed. For lack of optical
understandings, the decision makers dammed near outfitted the Navy with giant, top-dollar, ten-
inch oscilloscopes to accommodate a standard military camera. One cannot help but wonder how
many botched designs have gone forward when the decision makers had their blinders on.

Robert S. Babin 6 June 2001 /var/www/apps/scribd/scribd/tmp/scratch3/9049378.doc