Army Signal Research Articles

Breaking the Silk Dress cryptogram

A solution to the “Silk Dress cryptogram” is presented. The cryptogram was found to be a telegraphic code used for transmitting weather observations by the U.S. Army Signal Service (Signal Corps) and later by the U.S. Weather Bureau. The decoded messages were weather observations for a number of American and Canadian stations in 1888.

Storms and Swarms: The Role of the US Army Signal Corps' Weather Observers during the Rocky Mountain Locust Plague of the 1870s

Locust outbreaks have occurred around the world throughout history. But they did not pose a serious problem in the United States until the explosion of westward settlement in the aftermath of the Civil War. An insect known as the Rocky Mountain locust, which became migratory when under environmental stress, was the culprit. Earlier outbreaks had created problems for farmers in the Great Plains, but the massive infestation in the mid-1870s caused extensive damage and threatened to halt the nation's expansion to the Pacific. An unlikely ally in the fight against the locusts came in the form of the network of weather observers belonging to the US Army Signal Corps. In conjunction with its mission for providing military communications, the Signal Corps became responsible for establishing and operating the US weather bureau from 1870 to 1891. Its national network of weather stations was well suited for providing reports on the locust outbreaks. Working with the commission of professional scientists formed to study the problem and find solutions, the Signal Corps' observers contributed vital information to support that effort. The partnership between the commission and the army represented an early attempt by the federal government to use applied science to tackle a national problem. Ultimately, the farmers themselves brought about the demise of the Rocky Mountain locust. By cultivating the locust's breeding grounds in the river valleys and using the land for grazing, the farmers drove the Rocky Mountain locust to extinction.

William Gaddis, the Us Army, and the Unwriting of an American War Novel

This essay examines, for the first time, William Gaddis's stint as a scriptwriter for the US Army's Signal Corps Pictorial Services (APS). Through comparative analysis of a battle-documentary script that Gaddis wrote for the APS and his writing of the novel

The Myth of Cleveland Abbe: A Review of a Manufactured History of the Creation of the National Weather Service

Abstract For more than a century, Cleveland Abbe was placed on a pedestal as meteorology’s solitary leader. Lauded by power brokers within the developing U.S. meteorological community, directors of the Weather Bureau (predecessor to today’s National Weather Service), and the American Meteorological Society, he was cited by many as the father of what is now the NWS, its first director, and issuer of its first forecast. However, a historiographical review of the literature that established the Abbe legend presented here shows the image held of Abbe today was actively manufactured; written, and supported by Abbe himself, his family, the Weather Bureau, and others within the AMS. We show that Abbe’s role in the creation of the nation’s first federal weather service was elevated while the contributions of others were actively downplayed. The latter applies particularly to Increase Lapham, who worked for two decades to demonstrate how a 24-h forecast of events could be generated from the collection and analysis of surface data, and whose active solicitation of Congressman Halbert Paine ultimately led to the creation of the first national weather service within the U.S. Army Signal Service on 9 February 1870. This paper is provided to shed a clearer light on those who contributed to the creation of what is now called the National Weather Service, which recently celebrated its 150th anniversary, and offer insights into how the Abbe myth was sustained as the AMS celebrated its anniversaries at 25-yr intervals over its 100-yr history.

Monthly Weather Review at 150 Years: Its History, Impact, and Legacy

Abstract Monthly Weather Review, one of the oldest continuously published meteorological journals in the world, publishes its 150th volume this year. In January 1873, the U.S. War Department’s Army Signal Service began producing this monthly report summarizing weather across the United States. Its first issue consisted of a one-page narrative of weather conditions and storms and one chart depicting tracks of low pressure centers during that month. In 1891, Monthly Weather Review continued as a government publication with the transfer of the nation’s weather service from the military to the newly established U.S. Weather Bureau. Over time and sometimes erratically, it grew into a scientific journal. In 1974, Monthly Weather Review was transferred to the American Meteorological Society, who continues to publish it to this day (although a 2003 proposal might have ended it). This Historical Review discusses some of the journal’s history and impact, as well as its legacy. This review also compiles for the first time a complete list of Monthly Weather Review editors. The research published within Monthly Weather Review has included highly cited, ground-breaking articles on weather and climate phenomena (e.g., extratropical and tropical cyclones, El Niño–Southern Oscillation, Madden–Julian oscillation), general circulation modeling, and numerical weather prediction. The data published in the early issues have been used—and continue to be used to this day—for a variety of applied research and historical analysis purposes. The composition and content of Monthly Weather Review have changed over the past century and a half, continuing to evolve with the modern publishing landscape, with color figures at no additional cost, open-access articles, open data, and, in the near future, embedded figure animations.

Front-line Fowl: Messenger Pigeons as Communications Technology in the U.S. Army

ABSTRACT The United States Army Signal Corps maintained a program for communication by messenger pigeon from 1917 to 1957, long after developments in electronic communications technology rendered pigeons obsolete in many contexts. This article presents the history of the Signal Corps Pigeon Service as one of technological persistence and innovation. It argues that messenger pigeons remained significantly useful to the U.S. Army in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, primarily as a means of backup or emergency communication working in tandem with electronics. It shows that the physical and social environments of warfare created frequent need for this ‘low tech’ system. The article further suggests that certain changes in physical and social environments on and off the battlefield encouraged the program’s dismantling.

Retrospect

U.S. Army Signal Service weather map for 4:35 p.m. East Coast time, June 25, 1876. Although much of the western U.S. is void of weather data or analysis, the station plots and isotherms closest to ...

The Key Role Played by WAAC British Post Office Female Staff in Army Signal Units on the Western Front, 1917–1920

There is a gaping void in the historiography of the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC), later called the Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps QMAAC), brought about by the absence of an informed understanding of the crucial role played by the young women seconded from British post office exchanges to serve as telephonists and telegraphists in France in 1917. Specifically attached to Royal Engineers’ signal units in British Expeditionary Force army bases and all three echelons of its General Headquarters, their arrival ensured the continued smooth operation of the army’s vital lines of communication. This article examines how their key role as professional technologists within a tightly secured military sector made a significant contribution to the final successful outcome of the conflict. Questions can be raised why their skills were never later addressed within the historiography, and it may be concluded that adequate recognition is long overdue.

3. Soldier with a Notebook

3. Soldier with a Notebook Bill Broyles (bio) In April 1942 Ives left Douglas Aircraft and as a civilian went to work for the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the Army Chemical Corps, in succession, at the Presidio of San Francisco, then Fort Monmouth, New [End Page 280] Jersey, and then Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. He seems to have found a niche working with weather instruments, probably based on his limited experience monitoring weather in the Rockies. At the Presidio and Fort Monmouth he took a series of military training courses, though he makes no mention of anything like a boot camp. And he was assigned to Dugway as chief of the Meteorology Section. There, in his words, he "made standard and special weather observations, trained personnel in special chemical techniques, designed, built, tested, and operated a wide variety of special instruments for chemical meteorological work, including telemetering instruments for use in hazardous locations. Prepared reports on same, with recommendations for mass production, and instruction manuals for their use. Made, operated, and evaluated radiological instruments for tracer researches in connection with same."151 It is unclear whether Ives volunteered for the army or was drafted for World War II, but on July 17, 1943, he was inducted. His draft board was in Boulder, Colorado, but he gave his address as Upper Montclair, New Jersey, when he entered on duty as a second lieutenant "commissioned directly from civil life," undoubtedly because he was college educated with a master's degree. His discharge papers show work experience as a meteorologist with the U.S. Army Signal Corps; Chemical Warfare Service, U.S. Army; and the American Philosophical Society, Boulder, Colorado, 1938–1943, which at first appears perplexing but the society was the funding connection to his geological study for the Big Thompson project. Along the way he earned low-level security clearances, while his father, as head of Bell Laboratories, undoubtedly had high-level security clearances, because the lab had a role in perfecting top-secret projects like radar and infrared sniperscopes. His army physical qualified him for Limited Service based on some existing physical conditions. His health was "normal," with vitals as height, 69½ inches; 131 pounds; pulse of 88; and blood pressure of 125/80. His vision was 20/80 in his right eye and 20/70 in the left, both correctable to 20/20. Of interest, the report notes an appendectomy in 1931, fractured ribs on both sides in 1932, and both feet being "frozen severely" in 1928 with his right small toe being amputated, though he continued to work at altitudes and in cold doing search and rescue and geological research without further ill effects. The medical board notes his being 6 pounds underweight for his height and age and having deficient circulation in his feet, but gave him a waiver and recommended him for limited duty.152 [End Page 281] Ives's version of what happened reads like comedy, one that many veterans can relate to, but it was nothing to sneer at. He declared, I worked for Douglas Aircraft on the development of the C-54. That became the DC-4. One day I was told, "Hey, you're working for the Signal Corps." And I said, "Hell I am. I'm working for Douglas." "You're under orders." So suddenly I found myself in Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey. I was there about four weeks and I heard "Hey, you're to go out and start a meteorological station at Dugway, Utah." I said, "Where in the hell is this Dugway." And he showed me on the map. And so I went to Dugway and with some Signal Corps helpers set up a meteorological station there on the Chemical Corps proving ground. One day more papers came through and instead of being an employee of the Signal Corps, I was suddenly an employee of the Army Chemical Corps. And then a few months later, the commander called me in and said, "You're no longer a civilian." I said, "Now what happened?" "A presidential order. You're a first lieutenant." I said, "What difference does that make?" He said, "$200 a month less in pay...

Timeline for Ronald Lorenz Ives

Timeline for Ronald Lorenz Ives Bill Broyles (bio) 1909. Born October 12 in Cleveland, Ohio. 1911. His family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1918. His family moved to Upper Montclair, New Jersey. 1921 or 1922. He ran away from home to Colorado. 1922. Ronald enrolled in Montclair High School for fall semester. 1926. Part-time job doing radio work at Adams-Morgan in Montclair, New Jersey. 1927. Part-time job doing non-sync sound work at Flextone Talking Co., Montclair, New Jersey. [End Page 397] 1928. Graduated from Montclair High School in June, taking 6 years and standing in the bottom quarter of his class. 1928. Made first visit to Mexico and the Pinacate region, during summer. 1929–1931. Enrolled at Stevens Institute of Technology as a part-time student. 1928–1929. Instrument manufacturing at Weston Electric Company, Newark, New Jersey. 1930. Obtained his radio-telephone license. 1930–1938. Self-employed as freelance writer and photographer in Hoboken, New Jersey, and Boulder, Colorado. 1931. Made an extended trip to the Southwest, including Grand Canyon, Zion, and Sierra Pinacate. 1932. Published his first article. At least 600 technical articles and 230 non-technical articles followed. 1932–1937. Student at University of Colorado, Boulder. Enrolled June 20, 1932. Transferred some credits from Stevens Institute of Technology. BA degree, June 10, 1935. Provisionally entered graduate school January 2, 1935. MS in geology, June 14, 1937, "Glaciology of the Monarch Valley, Grand County, Colorado." 1937, June–January 1938. While living in Colorado, Ronald worked for Science Services Company, Washington, D.C., as an editorial staff writer, and did occasional freelance writing even after 1938. 1937–April 1940. Field surveys. Self-employed independent researcher, Boulder, Colorado. Also, part-time radio operator for the Municipal Police Department, Boulder, Colorado. 1940, April–November 1941. Radio operator with American Airlines, Fort Worth, Texas. 1941, November–April 1942. Electrical research with Douglas Aircraft Company, Santa Monica, California. 1942, April–July 1943. U.S. Army Signal Corps General Development Labs, Army Chemical Corps in Red Bank, New Jersey, and Dugway Proving Ground in Tooele, Utah. Another report says he was employed as a meteorologist at the Fort Monmouth Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories from May 13, 1942, to November 15, 1942, by the Civilian Personnel Branch, U.S. Army Signal Corps, when he transferred to Dugway Proving Grounds. [End Page 398] 1943, July 17–July 14, 1946. A soldier in U.S. Army, mostly at Dugway Proving Grounds. 1946, July–August 1950. Student, research associate, and instructor in Department of Geography, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. Entered graduate school in geography on October 11, 1946. MA degree in geography, October 15, 1947, "Climate of the Southern Salt Lake Desert, Utah." PhD degree in geomorphology, June 12, 1950, "Chinook Winds in the Colorado High Plains Region." 1950, August 24–April 1, 1951. Instructor at Armament School, Lowry Air Force Base, Denver, Colorado (GS-7). Honorably discharged U.S. Army Reserve April 1, 1953. 1951–1955. Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, Buffalo. A principal physicist and later a principal engineer. His work consisted of evaluating various military ideas for practicality and conducting research on some of them. He also designed and built equipment, and inspected and evaluated military equipment and operational methods, suggesting improvements or modifications where possible. 1953. His father, Herbert E. Ives, died. 1955–1968. Research in Palo Alto. 1955–1958. Tronicon, Inc., a research and development subcontractor for military devices and instrumentation. The company later was known as John C. Beckman Co. and then Beckman and Whitley, Inc. 1958–1962. Stanford Aerosol Laboratory at Palo Alto, a university research lab, where he worked as an electronic engineer on a series of special meteorological instruments being developed for the Army Chemical Corps. 1962–1968. Metronics, Inc., Palo Alto, California. Same sort of work. 1968–1975. Employed as assistant professor of geography at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. Taught a variety of geography classes. 1972. Suffered serious injuries in Jeep wreck. 1974. His mother, Mabel Lorenz Ives, died. [End Page 399] 1975. Retired from Northern Arizona University, mandatorily. 1982. Died February 26 in Tucson, Arizona. 1984. Book published: José Velásquez: Saga of a Borderland Soldier. Tucson: Southwestern Mission Research Center. Finished with assistance from Father...

Signal Progress: Early Developments in U.S. Radar TR Switching

When Privates George Elliott and Jo s eph Lockard discovered a large fleet of airplanes approaching Pearl Harbor, Hawai'i, on the morning of 7 December 1941, they were operating a new U.S. Army Signal Corps radar that used the same antenna for transmitting and receiving RF energy [1]. RF engineers had to quickly develop a variety of new techniques to keep the multikilowatt transmitter signals from degrading or damaging the sensitive receivers in those early systems. This past December marked the 75th anniversary of that event. Tying in with the exhibit of related hardware at the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society's (MTT-S) 2017 International Microwave Symposium in Honolulu this June, the goal of this article is to highlight some of the components and circuits used for transmit?receive (T/R) switching in U.S. radars from the pre-World War II era through the following few decades.

"미국 기록영화와 한국전쟁 ― 미 육군통신대 영상을 중심으로 ―"

"미국 기록영화와 한국전쟁 ― 미 육군통신대 영상을 중심으로 ―"

Jacques Isaac Pankove

Jacques Isaac Pankove, one of the great 20th-century innovators in materials science and semiconductors, died in his home in Princeton, New Jersey, on 12 July 2016. Jacques Isaac Pankove PPT|High resolutionJacques was born in Chernihiv, Ukraine, on 23 November 1922. A year later he and his family immigrated to Constantinople, and the following year they moved to Marseilles, France. After the Nazis occupied the city in 1942, he and his family immigrated to the US and settled in Oakland, California. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his BS in 1944 and his MS in 1948, both in electrical engineering. Between getting the two degrees, Jacques enlisted in the US Army Signal Corps and served in the Philippines. He earned his PhD from the University of Paris in 1960 for his work on IR emission in germanium.From 1948 to 1970, Jacques was a member of the technical staff at RCA Laboratories in Princeton, and he was an RCA fellow from 1970 to 1985. Among the seminal contributions he made while there were prototypes of the first commercial transistor, the first gallium arsenide IR LED, and the first gallium arsenide phosphide visible injection laser. Most notably, he pioneered the semiconductors based on the gallium nitride family and in the 1970s was the first to develop a GaN blue LED. In that decade he studied most of the physical properties of GaN, and his works helped launch the worldwide scientific exploration of its family of semiconductors for the next 30 years. That research has led to novel devices with multiple applications in such areas as solid-state lighting, information storage, and high-power and high-frequency electronics.Among the awards Jacques received for those discoveries were IEEE’s J. J. Ebers Award in 1975, the 1998 Rank Prize in Optoelectronics, and the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award from Berkeley in 2000. In 1997 the Materials Research Society dedicated its fall symposium on nitride semiconductors to him.When RCA decided to terminate the GaN program in the mid 1970s, Jacques redirected his energy and creativity to the fields of amorphous and crystalline silicon. Among his many contributions to those fields are his detailed investigations of the role of hydrogen in the materials; in particular, he discovered in the early 1980s how hydrogen deactivates p-type dopants in crystalline Si. Ten years later researchers discovered that deactivation of p-type dopants in GaN by hydrogen was responsible for the difficulty in generating p-type conductivity in it. Resolving that problem and employing improved heteroepitaxial techniques led to the first efficient blue LED by Shuji Nakamura and the device’s subsequent commercialization by Nichia Corp.Jacques was a Visiting MacKay Lecturer at Berkeley in 1968–69, a visiting professor at the University of Campinas in Brazil in 1975, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Missouri in 1984. From 1985 until his retirement in 1993, he was the Hudson Moore Jr Endowed Chair in the electrical and computer engineering department at the University of Colorado Boulder with a joint appointment as a distinguished scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden. At Boulder, in revisiting GaN, he invented the high-gain SiC/GaN heterojunction bipolar transistor, with good performance up to 500 °C. Later, as a professor emeritus, he founded the research company Astralux, where he continued to develop the transistor and other potential applications of GaN.A prolific inventor, Jacques had more than 90 US patents. In 1962 he made an educational film called Energy Gap and Recombination Radiation. In 1971 he wrote the classic textbook Optical Processes in Semiconductors (Dover). Additionally, he served as an editor of several influential books, including two volumes—Electroluminescence (1977) and Display Devices (1980)—of Springer’s Topics in Applied Physics series, and was a member of the editorial boards for several research journals.Jacques was a passionate teacher who was insatiably curious and creative. When not teaching or writing, he loved being active; he could be found playing tennis, skiing, hiking, gardening, or working on a home-improvement project. He was a generous supporter of the arts in Princeton and enjoyed taking painting, sculpture, and print-making classes. He is deeply missed by his family, friends, and colleagues across the world.© 2017 American Institute of Physics.

The Review of Historical Sociology of Korean War Photography: Focusing on the Activities of US Army Signal Corps Photo Unit (written by Jung Keun Sik and Kang Sung Hyun, Seoul National University Press, 2016) On the Necessity of the International Comparat

The Review of Historical Sociology of Korean War Photography: Focusing on the Activities of US Army Signal Corps Photo Unit (written by Jung Keun Sik and Kang Sung Hyun, Seoul National University Press, 2016) On the Necessity of the International Comparat

Parker Hitt's First Cylinder Device and the Genesis of U.S. Army Cylinder and Strip Devices

Articles discussing strip and cylinder devices inevitably discuss the role of Parker Hitt in the evolution of the U.S. Army's M-94 cylinder device. Hitt's development of a cylinder has long been attributed to work he did in 1913, based on letters he wrote to William Friedman in 1947. Newly discovered papers reveal that Hitt's first cylinder device was actually built in 1912 in collaboration with other students at the Army Signal School, and uncovers a previously unknown photograph of this early device.

Wave Attack

In the middle of the Second World War, the US Army Signal Corp suddenly realised they had a problem with their encrypted communications. The Bell Telephone machine, used to encode signals using the army's rotor-based key generator, would create a spike on an osciloscope in a remote part of the lab every time the machine changed its output. Worse, the spikes depended on the signal passing through, making it possible to recover the plain text being fed to the encryption machine. Officers were at first hesitant to halt the use of the system. But they allowed an experiment that placed Bell engineers 25m away, on the other side of the street in New York from the office that housed one of the Signal Corp's cryptocentres. They listened for an hour and, within four hours, demonstrated they were able to recover three-quarters of the messages being sent out. Bell spent the next six months fixing the machinery to stop it spewing out high levels of electromagnetic interference (EMI).

The Organization and Activities of the US Army Signal Corps Photo Unit: Perspectives of War Photography in the Early Stages of the Korean War

In research on the history of photography related to the Korean War, only a small number of studies have focused on the organization, activities and visual features of war photography of the Korean War. In particular, the organization and activities of the military photographers have hardly been examined. It is virtually unknown that Sgt. Charles R. Turnbull, Private First Class (PFC) Ronald L. Hancock and Cpl. Robert Dangel, who were the military photographers for General Douglas MacArthur, were immediately sent to Korea just after the outbreak of the Korean War to carry out their mission. They belonged to A Company (Photo), 71st Signal Service Battalion, which was attached to the Photo Division, GHQ-FEC (General Headquarters, Far East Command). The existing wartime photographs from the period June 28 to July 5, 1950 were mostly produced by these three men, along with Lt. F.J. Winslow, photo officer in the Korean Military Advisory Group (KMAG). They carried out their activities until the end of July 1950, moving freely between the wartime front and rear, photographing American, South and North Korean troops, and civilians. Their work reflects the chaos of the times and displays conflicting viewpoints, a reality made possible by the fact that there was comparatively little censorship in the early stages of the war. This study focuses on the perspectives of these four military photographers, which differed greatly from the perspectives of later Korean War photographers, who tended to reflect the official position of the US Army.

Studying the Impact of the Solar Activity on the Maximum Usable Frequency Parameter over Iraq Territory

In this study, the influence of the solar activity on the Maximum Usable Frequency (MUF) parameter has been achieved by adopting a monthly observed sunspots number for the years 2000 & 2010. The values of the MUF parameter has been calculated using the VOACAP international model between Baghdad city and many receiving stations which are distributed on different locations over Iraqi territory. The results of this study showed that the impact of the solar activity on the behavior of MUF parameter at year 2000 is more intense than that at the year of 2010. In the years 1920s and 1930s amateurs and professionals discovered HF communications. In the late '30s, many organizations were involved in the study of HF communications. A considerable effort was made in the U.S.A. and other countries. The Radio Propagation Unit of the U.S. Army Signal Corps provided a great deal of information and guidance on the phenomena of HF propagation in 1945. By 1948, a treatise of ionospheric radio propagation was published by the Central Radio Propagation Laboratory (CRPL) of the national Bureau of Standards. This document (NBS, Circular 462, 1948) outlined the state of the art in HF propagation. Techniques were included for: predicting the maximum usable frequencies (MUF); determining the MUF for any path at any time taking into account the various possible modes of propagation by combining theory and operational experiences; and estimating skywave field strength (1). The Maximum usable frequency (MUF) is the highest frequency at which radio waves are returned to Earth by ionospheric refraction and which can be used to transmit over a particular path under given ionospheric conditions at a specific time, the median value of MUF working 50% of the time specific time. The MUF is used to determine the frequency that provides the optimum performance for the radio communications system. The basic of the MUF represents the highest frequency by which a radio wave can propagate between given terminals by ionospheric propagation alone. The MUF in particular varies greatly throughout the day, seasonally, location of terminals, orientation, and the solar activity. The MUF is reflected from the maximum electron density within a given layer of the ionosphere, therefore the MUF must be statistically based on the electron density of ionosphere, so the frequencies higher than the MUF penetrate the ionosphere and continue into space, while frequencies lower than the MUF tend to refract in the ionosphere and return back to Earth (2).

Development of the AN/FPS-16 Instrumentation Radar

The AN/FPS-16 Instrumentation Radar, the first radar to be developed specifically for instrumentation of missile test ranges, entered development in 1954 under a US Army Signal Corps contract. It is a monopulse C-band tracking radar designed to hold both systematic and random angle errors to less than 0. 1 mils* rms and range errors to less than 5 yards rms. At the time of this writing in 2010, the AN/FPS-16 and its variants remain the primary source of trajectory data at US test ranges. Along with similar radars subsequently developed in other countries, they are in use at missile test ranges worldwide.

Retrospect: October 8, 1871: The Great Chicago Fire

U.S. Army Signal Service Weather Map for 7:35 a.m. Eastern Time, October 8, 1871. The wind at Chicago was out of the southwest—the prevailing direction for the month—at 19 mph. Its intensity would ...