Christie's auction and other computer history events

[William Donzelli]

>  Other than the magnetron, the most important thing
> that was developed for RADAR was the rotating display.

And the klystron - the magnetron was almost useless without a
matching klystron.

And the duplexor - combining the receive and transmitting antennas, so
radars could be smaller.

And the crystal mixer - so you could use the klystron as a local
oscillator.

And the directional antenna - without it, radar would have been very
inaccurate. 

Actually, PPI (as it was called, for Plan Position Indicator) was a bit
secondary.

> I'm not sure if this was developed in Britain or the US.

British, alothough there is some that claim the Germans had it early (I
would like to see more evidence).

Anyway, there was a lot going on, outside the cavity magnetron. Some
concepts came from this side of the Atlantic, some from Britain, some from
elsewhere.

William Donzelli
aw288 at osfn.org