"Swords into ploughshares": Breaking new ground with radar hardware and technique in physical research after World War II

Abstract

A survey is offered of applications to fundamental physical research, in the years immediately following World War II, of the instrumentalities developed for radar during that war. Attention is given to radar astronomy and radio astronomy, linear and cyclical accelerators, microwave spectroscopy, molecular beams, nuclear magnetic resonance, electron paramagnetic and ferromagnetic resonance, measurements of resistivity at high frequencies in metals and of second sound in helium II, and to the concepts of information and signal-to-noise ratio as basic to the design and analysis of experiments. In conjunction with this survey, consideration is given to the autonomy of physics as a knowledge-producing enterprise, framed as a question of continuity in research directions. As that question implies a baseline, the survey of postwar applications is preceded by a survey of those prewar directions of physical research requiring the highest available radio frequencies. Some 500 references are given.

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