Leo C. Young (12 January 1891 – 16 January 1981) was an American radio engineer who had many accomplishments during a long career at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. Although self-educated, he was a member of a small, creative team which some attributed to the developing the world's first true radar system.
Background and career
Leo Crawford Young grew up on a farm near
Van Wert, Ohio
Van Wert is a city in and the county seat of Van Wert County, Ohio, United States. The municipality is located in northwestern Ohio approximately 77 mi (123 km) SW of Toledo and 34 mi (54 km) SE of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The po ...
. Although his formal education stopped with high-school, he was self-educated in early radio technology. He built his first
crystal radio
A crystal radio receiver, also called a crystal set, is a simple radio receiver, popular in the early days of radio. It uses only the power of the received radio signal to produce sound, needing no external power. It is named for its most impo ...
when he was 14 years old. To receive stations, he learned the
Morse code
Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of ...
, and soon built his own
spark-gap transmitter
A spark-gap transmitter is an obsolete type of radio transmitter which generates radio waves by means of an electric spark."Radio Transmitters, Early" in Spark-gap transmitters were the first type of radio transmitter, and were the main type use ...
, joining the ranks of
amateur radio
Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emergency communic ...
enthusiasts in the pre-license days. (Young was later issued the call sign W3WV). After high school, he used his ability with Morse code to gain employment as a railroad
telegrapher
A telegraphist (British English), telegrapher (American English), or telegraph operator is an operator who uses a telegraph key to send and receive the Morse code in order to communicate by land lines or radio.
During the Great War the Roya ...
. In 1913, he joined the Naval Communications Reserves and set up the central control station for the Navy-Amateur Network.
The Navy Reserve was activated at the start of World War I in 1917. Young was assigned to the District Communications Office at
Great Lakes, Illinois
Naval Station Great Lakes (NAVSTA Great Lakes) is the home of the United States Navy's only recruit training, boot camp, located near North Chicago, Illinois, North Chicago, in Lake County, Illinois. Important tenant commands include the Recruit ...
, where
Albert Hoyt Taylor
Albert Hoyt Taylor (January 1, 1879 in Chicago, IL – December 11, 1961 in Los Angeles, CA) was an American electrical engineer who made important early contributions to the development of radar.
Biography
Taylor entered Northwestern Universi ...
was the Director. Taylor was also an amateur radio operator (call sign 9YN), and he and Young began a personal and professional relationship that existed for the rest of their lives. In 1918, Taylor was sent to the former Marconi Communications Station in
Belmar, New Jersey
Belmar is a borough in Monmouth County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, situated on the Jersey Shore. As of the 2010 United States census, the borough's population was 5,794,Anacostia, Washington, D.C.; Taylor arranged for Young to follow him in both of these assignments. In 1919, both Young and Taylor returned to civilian life, but stayed as employees at the ARL
In 1922, Taylor and Young were making measurements with a transmitter located at the ARL and a receiver on the opposite shore of the
Potomac River
The Potomac River () drains the Mid-Atlantic United States, flowing from the Potomac Highlands into Chesapeake Bay. It is long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map. Retrieved Augus ...
. A wavering in the strength of the received signal was noted as a wooded ship crossed the signal path. Taylor reported this to higher authorities as a potential method of detecting ships intruding into a formation, but no further tests were authorized.
One of Young's projects of the ARL was in developing
amplitude modulation
Amplitude modulation (AM) is a modulation technique used in electronic communication, most commonly for transmitting messages with a radio wave. In amplitude modulation, the amplitude (signal strength) of the wave is varied in proportion to ...
for transmitters, allowing
audio
Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to:
Sound
*Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound
*Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum
*Digital audio, representation of sound ...
communications as an alternate to Morse code. To test the equipment, he began "
broadcasting
Broadcasting is the distribution (business), distribution of sound, audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic medium (communication), mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio ...
" music and short news items using call letters
NSF
NSF may stand for:
Political organizations
*National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party
*NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party
*National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political gr ...
. By 1922, this expanded to broadcasts from Congress, including an address by President
Warren G. Harding
Warren Gamaliel Harding (November 2, 1865 – August 2, 1923) was the 29th president of the United States, serving from 1921 until his death in 1923. A member of the Republican Party, he was one of the most popular sitting U.S. presidents. A ...
. Requests for "air time" began to interfere with the Young's research work, and in early 1923, the broadcasting operation was transferred to Radio Virginia, the Naval Radio Service in Arlington, Virginia.
The
Naval Research Laboratory
The United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is the corporate research laboratory for the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. It was founded in 1923 and conducts basic scientific research, applied research, technological ...
(NRL) was opened in July 1923, at
Bellevue Bellevue means "beautiful view" in French. It may refer to:
Placenames
Australia
* Bellevue, Western Australia
* Bellevue Hill, New South Wales
* Bellevue, Queensland
* Bellevue, Glebe, an historic house in Sydney, New South Wales
Canada ...
in
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
, close by Anacosia. This absorbed a number of existing Naval research operations, including the ARL. Taylor was named Superintendent of the Radio Division with Young as his assistant. Over the next decade, Young had a major role in most of the early radio developments of the NRL, including their round-the-world
high-frequency
High frequency (HF) is the ITU designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves (radio waves) between 3 and 30 megahertz (MHz). It is also known as the decameter band or decameter wave as its wavelengths range from one to ten ...
experiment in 1925, communicating 10,000 miles between Radio Virginia and a U.S. Navy ship in Australia.
Gregory Breit
Gregory Breit (russian: Григорий Альфредович Брейт-Шнайдер, ''Grigory Alfredovich Breit-Shneider''; July 14, 1899, Mykolaiv, Kherson Governorate – September 13, 1981, Salem, Oregon) was a Russian-born Jewish Am ...
and
Merle A. Tuve
Merle Anthony Tuve (June 27, 1901 – May 20, 1982) was an American geophysicist who was the Chairman of the Office of Scientific Research and Development's Section T, which was created in August 1940. He was founding director of the Johns Hopkins ...
at the
Carnegie Institution of Washington
The Carnegie Institution of Washington (the organization's legal name), known also for public purposes as the Carnegie Institution for Science (CIS), is an organization in the United States established to fund and perform scientific research. Th ...
were studying the characteristics of the
ionosphere
The ionosphere () is the ionized part of the upper atmosphere of Earth, from about to above sea level, a region that includes the thermosphere and parts of the mesosphere and exosphere. The ionosphere is ionized by solar radiation. It plays an ...
(then called the
Kennelly–Heaviside layer
The Heaviside layer, sometimes called the Kennelly–Heaviside layer, named after Arthur E. Kennelly and Oliver Heaviside, is a layer of ionised gas occurring roughly between 90km and 150 km (56 and 93 mi) above the ground — one o ...
) using a transmitter built at the NRL. In attempting to determine the distance to the layer, they asked Young if he could design an appropriate modulation technique. Young suggested using pulse modulation, with the height possibly determined from the lapsed time between transmitted and received pulses. Young built the modulator, and in 1925 Breit and Tuve used this to determine that the height varied between 55 and 130 miles.
In 1930,
Lawrence A. Hyland
Lawrence A. "Pat" Hyland (August 26, 1897 – November 24, 1989) was an American electrical engineer. He is one of three individuals, with whom are credited in major contributions to the invention of radar, but is probably best known as the man w ...
, another member of Taylor's team dating back to Great Lakes, was testing an antenna and observed interference from a passing aircraft. Reminded of the 1922 observation of a similar nature, Taylor and Young submitted a report titled "Radio-Echo Signals from Moving Objects," and again suggested that this might be used for detection purpose. The report slowly made its way through the bureaucracy in Washington, and in early 1932 was forwarded to the Army's
Signal Corps Laboratories Signal Corps Laboratories (SCL) was formed on June 30, 1930, as part of the U.S. Army Signal Corps at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. Through the years, the SCL had a number of changes in name, but remained the operation providing research and developmen ...
where it fell on "deaf ears."
Taylor convinced the NRL Director to allow an internally funded low-level project on interference-based detection. Lack of success by early 1934, however, led Young to suggest trying a pulsed transmitter, similar to the one built earlier for Breit and Tuve; this would not only provide a higher peak power but the timing between the transmitted and received pulse could be used to determine the distance to the target.
Robert Morris Page
Robert Morris Page (2 June 1903 – 15 May 1992) was an American physicist who was a leading figure in the development of radar technology. Later, Page served as the Director of Research for the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
Life and career
P ...
was assigned by Taylor to construct an experimental apparatus to test this concept. Page used a pulsed transmitter to drive an existing antenna atop the main NRL building. A receiver, modified to pass pulsed signals, had its antenna mounted some distance away from the transmitter. Both the transmitted and received signals were displayed on a commercial
oscilloscope
An oscilloscope (informally a scope) is a type of electronic test instrument that graphically displays varying electrical voltages as a two-dimensional plot of one or more signals as a function of time. The main purposes are to display repetiti ...
.
In December 1934, this system successfully detected an aircraft at distances up to one mile as it flew up and down the Potomac River. Although the displayed signal was almost indistinct and the range was small, this was a proof of the basic concept. Based on this, Page, Taylor, and Young are usually credited with building and demonstrating the world's first true
radar
Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...
. (Radar is a name coming from an
acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
for RAdio Detection And Ranging. A number of earlier devices, dating back to 1904, had been developed for detecting remote objects, but none of these measured the distance (range) to the target; thus, they were not radar systems.)
With this success, in 1935 funds were officially provided for further research and development of the system. The early proof-of-concept equipment operated at 60
MHz
The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that one he ...
and required an antenna impractically large for shipboard use. For the follow-on system, the frequency was raised to 200 MHz, the limit for transmitter tubes and other components at that time. This allowed the antenna to be greatly reduced in size (antenna size is
inversely proportional
In mathematics, two sequences of numbers, often experimental data, are proportional or directly proportional if their corresponding elements have a constant ratio, which is called the coefficient of proportionality or proportionality constan ...
to the operating frequency).
Young and Page developed another very important component, the
duplexer
A duplexer is an electronic device that allows bi-directional ( duplex) communication over a single path. In radar and radio communications systems, it isolates the receiver from the transmitter while permitting them to share a common antenna. M ...
. This device allowed a common antenna to be used for both transmitting and receiving. With other improvements, a full prototype system was first tested at sea in April 1937. Initially designated the XAF, the system was improved and tested, then placed into production as the
CXAM radar
The CXAM radar system was the first production radar system deployed on United States Navy ships, operating in the mid-high VHF frequency band of 200 MHz. It followed several earlier prototype systems, such as the NRL radar installed in April ...
, the first such system deployed by the U.S. Navy starting in May 1940. (The acronym RADAR was coined by the Navy at that time as a cover for the highly classified work in this new technology.)
Young continued to work at the NRL as a research engineer until his retirement in 1961. Mr. Young died on January 16, 1981, in
Forestville, Maryland
Forestville is an unincorporated area and census-designated place (CDP) in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States. Per the 2020 census, the population was 12,831. The community is a mixture of garden apartments, single-family homes, and ...
."Leo Young, Retired Scientist, Helped Develop Early Radar", ''The Washington Post'', January 24, 1981
Recognitions
Leo C. Young's many honors associated with the Naval Research Laboratory included
*The Presidential Certificate of Merit from President
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...
in 1946, and
*The Navy Department's Distinguished Civilian Service Award in 1958.
In recognition of Young's contributions to the field of radio, he received
*The
Stuart Ballantine Medal
{{notability, date=February 2018
The Stuart Ballantine Medal was a science and engineering award presented by the Franklin Institute, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. It was named after the US inventor Stuart Ballantine.
Laureates
*1947 - Geor ...
of the Franklin Institute in 1957, and
*A 50-year gold certificate from the Quarter-Century Wireless Association in 1966.
References
Notes
General
*Brown, Louis; ''A Radar History of World War II'', Institute of Physics Publishing, 1999
*Page, Robert Morris; ''The Origin of Radar'', Doubleday & Company, 1962
*Watson, Raymond C., Jr.; ''Radar Origins Worldwide'', Trafford Publishing, 2009