Over Christmas of 1952

I was able to get some leave time, and went up to Madison NJ to spend it with my family, during that time, our next door neighbor, who was head of a lab at BELL LABS in Chatham, NJ, took me on a tour. There I saw some of the up and coming electronics hardware for the Navy, and even met the developer of the transistor. I saw a demonstration of the new voice scrambler that was soon to provide secure voice phone and radio communications. I also saw a very new development from Japan, A Sony Trinitron, with a three gun, primary color TV system. Its color projector system really impressed me. Now the threads are brought together, so on with the tale. We sailed for local training exercises in January of 1953, one of which was simulated air attacks in bad weather. Early on, I stood watches in CIC on the air radarscope. We were under attack by Orange aircraft, and the weather was bad, the seas were running 30 to 40 ft, and the sea return was making it very difficult to find the aircraft. This made me think of a way to stop the clutter, and make the radar much more effective. I thought back to the Chromasthenia projector, and my trip to BELL LABS, and suddenly, all was clear. All I had to do was to build a Doppler crossover network so that high Doppler went to the red gun, neutral Doppler was sent to the green gun, and low, or receding Doppler went to the yellow gun. The radarscope was replaced with a Trinitron gun and the input was the radar signal received. Now an attacking plane was a bright red pip amongst the green sea return, and a departing aircraft was a safe yellow. And if he returned to attack us, he immediately turned bright red. Now this system not only made it easier to see the contacts, but it classified them. Red, incoming attacks, green, don't worry; it's our formation, and yellow, departing, no threat, but Watch them.

The OPS Officer, Cdr. Ben Lauff, was impressed. Cdr. Lauff, as a young Ensign, left Pearl Harbor on December 6th, 1941 for duty at Wake Island. You may remember him, he became famous as the "Voice of Wake Island" who kept up a running commentary by radio to Pearl and the World as the Battle of Wake played out, and our forces tried to beat off the Japanese assault. He was taken prisoner there. And after the war, when released from prison in Japan found out that all his contemporaries held the rank of CDR. And Ben's Date of rank was his date of capture, with all back pay and benefits, from that day, So he was an Ensign for 6 months, and then full Commander. Now, how's that for a story! Cdr. Lauff encouraged me to submit my idea to the Naval Test and Development center, which I did. A few month's later, I got a very short letter of rejection from them, stating, that my idea was interesting, and would work, but the Navy didn't have a ship big enough to carry it. In retrospect, it is apparent, that they had not thought of using transistors, or a Trinitron tube, but were thinking of using the same huge tubes that our present radar used. Thus, the comment, no ship is big enough. With the use of those 2 items, my Doppler radar could fit in a cigar box; in fact, the general aviation version is small enough to fit in the wing of a Cherokee 150 aircraft. My great idea was too early for its time. In a closing note, Ben and I became good friends, and spent a lot of time on liberty together in Japan. His nickname is Benjo, and it was always fun to go into a Japanese club, bar or restaurant, and to introduce us as Hi, we're Benjo, and Skip. You could hear the laughter go all through the establishment, as all the employees had to come and see this funny foreigner called "Bathroom" We always got very good service.