Studies of the ionosphere and forecasts for radiocommunications. Physicists and engineers, the military and national laboratories in France (and Germany) after 19451

Abstract

The text considers ionospheric studies, solar research and forecasts for telecommunications in post‐WWII France. It starts with French activities in occupied Germany in 1944 and 1945, and shows how the creation of a network of academic and military‐ interests was organized around three main laboratories dealing with radio‐astronomy, solar physics and ionospheric research and forecasts. Another group of interests had congealed in France around the same field of ‘practical interests’, however. Its strengths and weaknesses are described, as well as the major conflict with the first network to control forecasting. The paper ends by describing the recompositions of disciplinary and political interests in the mid‐1950s, when space sciences entered the picture in France, and shows how that eased the finding of a ‘national’ solution for ionospheric research and military and civilian forecasts for telecommunications.