[Dailydave] we asked for death rays, all we got was RADAR

[Andrew Ruef]

“New forms of anti-air defense seemed essential to the British Air Ministry, and in 1935 the Ministry’s Directory of Scientific Research established a Committee for the Scientific Survey of Air Defense, to be led by Professor Henry T. Tizard. The Air Ministry charged the committee of eminent scientist to evaluate all possible ideas and technologies, both old and new, that might be employed in the aerial defense of Great Britain. A death ray was one of the old ideas. For example, H.G. Wells in his 1897 War of the Worlds wrote of the invading Martians wielding a death ray. The board realized the concept was outlandish, but their task was to explore any possibility, and only after scientifically verifying lack of merit would they discount an idea. 

As a consequence, in January 1935 Dr. Robert A Watson-Watt, Superintendent of the National Physical Laboratory’s Radio Research Department at Slough, England, issued a task to Arnold F. Wilkins, the laboratory’s Scientific Officer. Wilkins’ assignment was to calculate whether enough power could be concentrated in a radio beam to incapacitate a bomber pilot by making his blood boil (that is, a death ray). Wilkins’ calculations confirmed that the concept was out of the question, even if only enough heating was required to raise a person’s blood temperature to high-fever level. (If you have doubts that radio waves can warm you at all, consider your microwave oven.) Wilkins could have dropped the question there and gone back to work. 

But Wilkins remembered talking to British Post Office Engineers in 1931 and 1932 when they were experimenting with a communication system to link the Scottish islands with the mainland. They told him of the nuisance caused by radio waves reflected from passing airplanes that disrupted their experiments. Wilkins remarked to Watson-Watt that if the Air Ministry wished to use radio energy as a defense against bombers, they might consider using radio waves reflected from the skin of bombers for advance warning. In a few quick calculations he showed Watson-Watt that existing transmitter and receiver technology could create and detect reflected radio energy at tens of miles.” 

“When Computers Went to Sea” by David Boslaugh

Remember this story every time someone asks you to investigate something ridiculous. Wilkins could have done his job and gone back to his crossword but he spent the extra five minutes and in exchange we didn’t lose the air battle.