Radar
Radio echoes locate aircraft in darkness and cloud.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 5 years
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Industrial, Holocene
Watson-Watt demonstrates aircraft detection by radio in 1935, and Britain builds the Chain Home network and the integrated Dowding system that turns raw detections into intercepts — the system mattered more than the technology. The cavity magnetron of 1940 makes compact high-power sets possible and is handed to the United States. Radar shapes the air and naval war, and afterwards becomes air traffic control, weather forecasting and radio astronomy.