The change of phase due to the passage of electric waves through thin plates and the index of refraction of water for such waves: With applications to the optics of thin films and prisms
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The Change Of Phase Due To The Passage Of Electric Waves Through Thin Plates And The Index Of Refraction Of Water For Such Waves: With Applications To The Optics Of Thin Films And Prisms ...
William Richards Blair
University of Chicago., 1908
Science; Electricity; Electric waves; Refractive index; Science / Electricity; Science / Electromagnetism; Science / Optics; Science / Physics; Science / Waves & Wave Mechanics; Technology & Engineering / Electrical
William Richards Blair was an Irish -born American physicist, scientist and U. S. Army officer. He also managed the U. S. Army's Signal Corps Laboratories.
Background
William Blair was born on November 7, 1874, near Coleraine, County Derry, Ireland, the son of Thomas Wray Blair and Mary Richards. The family immigrated in 1884 to the United States, where his father engaged in farming near Emporia, Kansas.
Education
Blair graduated from the State Normal School at Emporia in 1895 with a teaching certificate. After serving as principal of Pittsburg High School and as an instructor in mathematics at the Wisconsin State Normal School at Oshkosh (1897 - 1902), he entered the University of Chicago, from which he received the B. S. in 1904 and the Ph. D. in 1906.
Career
In 1906, Blair began service in the U. S. Weather Bureau as a meteorologist. He then served as director of upper-air research at the Mount Weather Observatory, Bluemont, Virginia (1907 - 1910). In 1917, Blair joined the army and served with the Allied Expeditionary Force in France, as head of the meteorological section. Blair remained in the army after the war. In 1919 he was a member of the Interallied Committee for Aerial Navigation and of the International Wireless Commission. His interest in meteorology led naturally to an interest in better means of atmospheric detection and navigation. This meshed well with the need of the military for better means of detecting the approach of enemy aircraft. Blair later stated that the concept that became pulse-echo radar came to him as early as 1926 (an important date, in light of later charges that others had preceded him in the development of radar) at the Army Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The idea arose from class discussions on how to track and direct antiaircraft fire to fast-moving enemy aircraft. Blair worked on the concept while in charge of the research and engineering division of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer at Washington, D. C. , in the late 1920's. As director of the Signal Corps Laboratories at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey (1930 - 1938), he brought his work in pulse-echo radar to fruition.
Blair was dissatisfied with detection by sound, then the chief means, and thought that high-frequency radio or thermal detection would be more successful. In 1931 he brought all army experiments in detection together in Project 88, "Position Finding by Means of Light. " Blair sustained the Signal Corps interest in radiowave detection, and supported radio pulse-echo over radio beat because the former could differentiate targets. He kept open other avenues of detecting, such as thermal and sound, but he held firmly to his belief that the only feasible plan lay in pulse-echo detection, and he clearly stated this in his 1935 report to the chief signal officer. In spite of work by the Naval Research Laboratories with radio detection, Blair remained strong in his objections to this method. He was encouraged when thermal detection was declared ineffective by researchers in the Signal Corps and the Corps of Engineers. Although little funding was forthcoming, research in pulse-echo detection received high priority from the War Department.
In May 1937 the first U. S. Army radar was successfully demonstrated to influential military and government officials. This radar was known as SCR-268. The army pronounced it to be "as important and far reaching in its military applications as the first United States patent on the telephone was to commercial applications. " As a result of the secrecy surrounding SCR-268, Blair did not apply for a patent until 1945. Twelve years later he was awarded U. S. Patent 2, 808, 819. There was controversy over the invention. Some claimed that the navy had developed the fundamental system before 1930. Others credited Sir Watson Watt of Britain with the invention. But Blair's system utilized pulse-echo, and that of the navy did not. Watt's system needed two receivers, and Blair's did not. In addition, Blair's unit was mobile, and the other two systems were not. Although the army considered Blair the "father of radar, " some commercial users did not recognize his patent and refused to pay him royalties. Dr. Robert Morris Page, former director of research at the U. S. Naval Laboratory, makes no mention of Blair in his Origin of Radar (1962). Blair retired from the army in 1938 because of ill health, but continued as a technical adviser to the Signal Corps. He died in Fair Haven, New Jersey.