Comment by teleforce
6 months ago
It's very true.
Guess who pioneered the venerable Silicon Valley, it's HP (then Agilent, now Keysight). Their first killer product was the function (signal/waveform) generator. HP basically the Levi's of the radar era, making tools for the radar/transistor/circuit technology gold rush.
One of the best academic engineering research labs in the world for many decades now is MIT Lincoln Lab, and guess what it's a radar research lab [1].
I can go on but you probably get the idea now.
[1] MIT Lincoln Laboratory:
Interesting you mention the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, just read the new ATC article on computer.rip on the homepage which also mentions it. Coincidence? Just curious, first time hearing of it ever and now twice in two days.
part of why "radar" does not have the mystique of other superweapons is that it was first of all not exclusive/unknown/secret technology, all of the combatants on both sides knew about it and were working on it before the war started, while paradoxically at the same time during the war it was ultra top secret, because small details of the technology were quite significant in deployment; and "good defense" is never as exciting as good offense. (modern radar today is more fully offensive)
My grandfather did a PhD in Germany in the early 30s, learned German well enough to defend his thesis. After working on radar through to the end of the war he was part of the control commission that went around German industry to find out what it had been doing, he discovered that he already knew all the senior radar scientists from when they had been students together.