Leo C. Young
Encyclopedia
Leo C. Young was an American radio engineer who had many accomplishments during a long career at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. Although self-educated, he was a member of a small, creative team that is generally credited with developing the world's first true radar system.
. Although his formal education stopped with high-school, he was self-educated in early radio technology. He built his first crystal radio when he was 14 years old. To receive stations, he learned the Morse Code
, and soon built his own spark-gap transmitter
, joining the ranks of amateur radio
enthusiasts in the pre-license days. (Young was later issued the call sign W3WV). After high school, he used his ability with Morse code to gain employment as a railroad telegrapher. In 1913, he joined the Naval Communications Reserves and set up the central control station for the Navy-Amateur Network.
The Navy Reserve was activated at the start of World War I in 1917. Young was assigned to the District Communications Office at Great Lakes, Illinois, where Albert Hoyt Taylor was the Director. Taylor was also an amateur radio operator (call sign 9YN), and he and Young began a personal and professional relationship that existed for the rest of their lives. In 1918, Taylor was sent to the former Marconi
Communications Station in Belmar, New Jersey
, to head the Navy's Trans-Atlantic Communications System, and then went to the Navy's Aircraft Radio Laboratory (ARL) at Anacostia, Washington, D.C.; Taylor arranged for Young to follow him in both of these assignments. In 1919, both Young and Taylor returned to civilian life, but stayed as employees at the ARL
In 1922, Taylor and Young were making measurements with a transmitter located at the ARL and a receiver on the opposite shore of the Potomac River
. A wavering in the strength of the received signal was noted as a wooded ship crossed the signal path. Taylor reported this to higher authorities as a potential method of detecting ships intruding into a formation, but no further tests were authorized.
One of Young's projects of the ARL was in developing amplitude modulation
for transmitters, allowing audio
communications as an alternate to Morse code. To test the equipment, he began "broadcasting
" music and short news items using call letters NSF. By 1922, this expanded to broadcasts from Congress, including an address by President Warren G. Harding
. Requests for "air time" began to interfere with the Young's research work, and in early 1923, the broadcasting operation was transferred to Radio Virginia, the Naval Radio Service in Arlington, Virginia.
The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) was opened in July 1923, at Bellevue
in Washington, D.C.
, close by Anacosia. This absorbed a number of existing Naval research operations, including the ARL. Taylor was named Superintendent of the Radio Division with Young as his assistant. Over the next decade, Young had a major role in most of the early radio developments of the NRL, including their round-the-world high-frequency experiment in 1925, communicating 10,000 miles between Radio Virginia and a U.S. Navy ship in Australia.
Gregory Breit
and Merle A. Tuve at the Carnegie Institution of Washington were studying the characteristics of the ionosphere
(then called the Kennelly-Heaviside layer
) using a transmitter built at the NRL. In attempting to determine the distance to the layer, they asked Young if he could design an appropriate modulation technique. Young suggested using pulse modulation, with the height possibly determined from the lapsed time between transmitted and received pulses. Young built the modulator, and in 1925 Breit and Tuve used this to determine that the height varied between 55 and 130 miles.
In 1930, Lawrence A. Hyland
, another member of Taylor's team dating back to Great Lakes, was testing an antenna and observed interference from a passing aircraft. Reminded of the 1922 observation of a similar nature, Taylor and Young submitted a report titled "Radio-Echo Signals from Moving Objects," and again suggested that this might be used for detection purpose. The report slowly made its way through the bureaucracy in Washington, and in early 1932 was forwarded to the Army's Signal Corps Laboratories
where it fell on "deaf ears."
Taylor convinced the NRL Director to allow an internally funded low-level project on interference-based detection. Lack of success by early 1934, however, led Young to suggest trying a pulsed transmitter, similar to the one built earlier for Breit and Tuve; this would not only provide a higher peak power but the timing between the transmitted and received pulse could be used to determine the distance to the target.
Robert Morris Page
was assigned by Taylor to construct an experimental apparatus to test this concept. Page used a pulsed transmitter to drive an existing antenna atop the main NRL building. A receiver, modified to pass pulsed signals, had its antenna mounted some distance away from the transmitter. Both the transmitted and received signals were displayed on a commercial oscilloscope
.
In December 1934, this system successfully detected an aircraft at distances up to one mile as it flew up and down the Potomac River. Although the displayed signal was almost indistinct and the range was small, this was a proof of the basic concept. Based on this, Page, Taylor, and Young are usually credited with building and demonstrating the world's first true radar
. (Radar is a name coming from an acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging. A number of earlier devices, dating back to 1904, had been developed for detecting remote objects, but none of these measured the distance (range) to the target; thus, they were not radar systems.)
With this success, in 1935 funds were officially provided for further research and development of the system. The early proof-of-concept equipment operated at 60 MHz and required an antenna impractically large for shipboard use. For the follow-on system, the frequency was raised to 200 MHz, the limit for transmitter tubes and other components at that time. This allowed the antenna to be greatly reduced in size (antenna size is inversely proportional to the operating frequency).
Young and Page developed another very important component, the duplexer. This device allowed a common antenna to be used for both transmitting and receiving. With other improvements, a full prototype system was first tested at sea in April 1937. Initially designated the XAF, the system was improved and tested, then placed into production as the CXAM radar
, the first such system deployed by the U.S. Navy starting in May 1940. (The acronym RADAR was coined by the Navy at that time as a cover for the highly classified
work in this new technology.)
Young continued to work at the NRL as a research engineer until his retirement in 1961. Mr. Young died on January 16, 1981, in Forestville, Maryland
.
In recognition of Young's contributions to the field of radio, he received
Background and Career
Leo Crawford Young grew up on a farm near Van Wert, OhioVan Wert, Ohio
As of the census of 2000, there were 10,690 people, 4,556 households, and 2,947 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,803.8 people per square mile . There were 4,927 housing units at an average density of 831.4 per square mile...
. Although his formal education stopped with high-school, he was self-educated in early radio technology. He built his first crystal radio when he was 14 years old. To receive stations, he learned the Morse Code
Morse code
Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...
, and soon built his own spark-gap transmitter
Spark-gap transmitter
A spark-gap transmitter is a device for generating radio frequency electromagnetic waves using a spark gap.These devices served as the transmitters for most wireless telegraphy systems for the first three decades of radio and the first demonstrations of practical radio were carried out using them...
, joining the ranks of amateur radio
Amateur radio
Amateur radio is the use of designated radio frequency spectrum for purposes of private recreation, non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, and emergency communication...
enthusiasts in the pre-license days. (Young was later issued the call sign W3WV). After high school, he used his ability with Morse code to gain employment as a railroad telegrapher. In 1913, he joined the Naval Communications Reserves and set up the central control station for the Navy-Amateur Network.
The Navy Reserve was activated at the start of World War I in 1917. Young was assigned to the District Communications Office at Great Lakes, Illinois, where Albert Hoyt Taylor was the Director. Taylor was also an amateur radio operator (call sign 9YN), and he and Young began a personal and professional relationship that existed for the rest of their lives. In 1918, Taylor was sent to the former Marconi
Marconi Company
The Marconi Company Ltd. was founded by Guglielmo Marconi in 1897 as The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company...
Communications Station in Belmar, New Jersey
Belmar, New Jersey
Belmar is a borough in Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 5,794. The Borough of Belmar is governed under the Faulkner Act system of municipal government....
, to head the Navy's Trans-Atlantic Communications System, and then went to the Navy's Aircraft Radio Laboratory (ARL) at Anacostia, Washington, D.C.; Taylor arranged for Young to follow him in both of these assignments. In 1919, both Young and Taylor returned to civilian life, but stayed as employees at the ARL
In 1922, Taylor and Young were making measurements with a transmitter located at the ARL and a receiver on the opposite shore of the Potomac River
Potomac River
The Potomac River flows into the Chesapeake Bay, located along the mid-Atlantic coast of the United States. The river is approximately long, with a drainage area of about 14,700 square miles...
. A wavering in the strength of the received signal was noted as a wooded ship crossed the signal path. Taylor reported this to higher authorities as a potential method of detecting ships intruding into a formation, but no further tests were authorized.
One of Young's projects of the ARL was in developing amplitude modulation
Amplitude modulation
Amplitude modulation is a technique used in electronic communication, most commonly for transmitting information via a radio carrier wave. AM works by varying the strength of the transmitted signal in relation to the information being sent...
for transmitters, allowing audio
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
communications as an alternate to Morse code. To test the equipment, he began "broadcasting
Broadcasting
Broadcasting is the distribution of audio and video content to a dispersed audience via any audio visual medium. Receiving parties may include the general public or a relatively large subset of thereof...
" music and short news items using call letters NSF. By 1922, this expanded to broadcasts from Congress, including an address by President Warren G. Harding
Warren G. Harding
Warren Gamaliel Harding was the 29th President of the United States . A Republican from Ohio, Harding was an influential self-made newspaper publisher. He served in the Ohio Senate , as the 28th Lieutenant Governor of Ohio and as a U.S. Senator...
. Requests for "air time" began to interfere with the Young's research work, and in early 1923, the broadcasting operation was transferred to Radio Virginia, the Naval Radio Service in Arlington, Virginia.
The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) was opened in July 1923, at Bellevue
Bellevue, Washington, D.C.
Bellevue is a residential neighborhood located in Southwest Washington, D.C, east of Bolling Air Force Base. It is bounded by Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue SW to the west and northwest, Joliet Street SW to the south, and First Street and South Capitol Street on the east. There are many garden...
in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, close by Anacosia. This absorbed a number of existing Naval research operations, including the ARL. Taylor was named Superintendent of the Radio Division with Young as his assistant. Over the next decade, Young had a major role in most of the early radio developments of the NRL, including their round-the-world high-frequency experiment in 1925, communicating 10,000 miles between Radio Virginia and a U.S. Navy ship in Australia.
Gregory Breit
Gregory Breit
Gregory Breit was a Russian-born American physicist and professor at universities in New York, Wisconsin, Yale, and Buffalo...
and Merle A. Tuve at the Carnegie Institution of Washington were studying the characteristics of the ionosphere
Ionosphere
The ionosphere is a part of the upper atmosphere, comprising portions of the mesosphere, thermosphere and exosphere, distinguished because it is ionized by solar radiation. It plays an important part in atmospheric electricity and forms the inner edge of the magnetosphere...
(then called the Kennelly-Heaviside layer
Kennelly-Heaviside layer
The Kennelly–Heaviside layer, named after Arthur Edwin Kennelly and Oliver Heaviside, also known as the E region or simply the Heaviside layer, is a layer of ionised gas occurring between roughly 90–150 km above the ground — one of several layers in the Earth's ionosphere...
) using a transmitter built at the NRL. In attempting to determine the distance to the layer, they asked Young if he could design an appropriate modulation technique. Young suggested using pulse modulation, with the height possibly determined from the lapsed time between transmitted and received pulses. Young built the modulator, and in 1925 Breit and Tuve used this to determine that the height varied between 55 and 130 miles.
In 1930, Lawrence A. Hyland
Lawrence A. Hyland
Lawrence A. "Pat" Hyland was an American electrical engineer. He is one of several people credited with major contributions to the invention of radar, but is probably best known as the man who transformed Hughes Aircraft from Howard Hughes' aviation "hobby shop" into one of the world's leading...
, another member of Taylor's team dating back to Great Lakes, was testing an antenna and observed interference from a passing aircraft. Reminded of the 1922 observation of a similar nature, Taylor and Young submitted a report titled "Radio-Echo Signals from Moving Objects," and again suggested that this might be used for detection purpose. The report slowly made its way through the bureaucracy in Washington, and in early 1932 was forwarded to the Army's Signal Corps Laboratories
Signal Corps Laboratories
Signal Corps Laboratories was formed on June 30, 1930, as part of the U.S. Army Signal Corps at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. Through the years, the SCL had a number of changes in name, but remained the operation providing research and development services for the Signal Corps.-Background:At the...
where it fell on "deaf ears."
Taylor convinced the NRL Director to allow an internally funded low-level project on interference-based detection. Lack of success by early 1934, however, led Young to suggest trying a pulsed transmitter, similar to the one built earlier for Breit and Tuve; this would not only provide a higher peak power but the timing between the transmitted and received pulse could be used to determine the distance to the target.
Robert Morris Page
Robert Morris Page
Robert Morris Page was an American physicist who was a leading figure in the development of radar technology. Later, Page served as the Director of Research for the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.-Life and career:...
was assigned by Taylor to construct an experimental apparatus to test this concept. Page used a pulsed transmitter to drive an existing antenna atop the main NRL building. A receiver, modified to pass pulsed signals, had its antenna mounted some distance away from the transmitter. Both the transmitted and received signals were displayed on a commercial oscilloscope
Oscilloscope
An oscilloscope is a type of electronic test instrument that allows observation of constantly varying signal voltages, usually as a two-dimensional graph of one or more electrical potential differences using the vertical or 'Y' axis, plotted as a function of time,...
.
In December 1934, this system successfully detected an aircraft at distances up to one mile as it flew up and down the Potomac River. Although the displayed signal was almost indistinct and the range was small, this was a proof of the basic concept. Based on this, Page, Taylor, and Young are usually credited with building and demonstrating the world's first true radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
. (Radar is a name coming from an acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging. A number of earlier devices, dating back to 1904, had been developed for detecting remote objects, but none of these measured the distance (range) to the target; thus, they were not radar systems.)
With this success, in 1935 funds were officially provided for further research and development of the system. The early proof-of-concept equipment operated at 60 MHz and required an antenna impractically large for shipboard use. For the follow-on system, the frequency was raised to 200 MHz, the limit for transmitter tubes and other components at that time. This allowed the antenna to be greatly reduced in size (antenna size is inversely proportional to the operating frequency).
Young and Page developed another very important component, the duplexer. This device allowed a common antenna to be used for both transmitting and receiving. With other improvements, a full prototype system was first tested at sea in April 1937. Initially designated the XAF, the system was improved and tested, then placed into production as the CXAM radar
CXAM radar
The CXAM radar system was the first production radar system deployed on United States Navy ships. It followed several earlier prototype systems, such as the NRL radar installed in April 1937 on the destroyer ; its successor, the XAF, installed in December 1938 on the battleship ; and the first...
, the first such system deployed by the U.S. Navy starting in May 1940. (The acronym RADAR was coined by the Navy at that time as a cover for the highly classified
Classified
Classified may refer to:*Classified information, sensitive information to which access is restricted by law or regulation to particular classes of people*Classified advertising*Classified , rapper from Halifax, Nova Scotia...
work in this new technology.)
Young continued to work at the NRL as a research engineer until his retirement in 1961. Mr. Young died on January 16, 1981, in Forestville, Maryland
Forestville, Maryland
Forestville is an unincorporated area and census-designated place in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States. The population was 12,707 at the 2000 census...
.
Recognitions
Leo C. Young's many honors associated with the Naval Research Laboratory included- The Presidential Certificate of Merit from President Harry S. TrumanHarry S. TrumanHarry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
in 1946, and - The Navy Department's Distinguished Civilian Service Award in 1958.
In recognition of Young's contributions to the field of radio, he received
- The Stuart Ballantine Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1957, and
- A 50-year gold certificate from the Quarter-Century Wireless Association in 1966.
General
- Brown, Louis; A Radar History of World War II, Institute of Physics Publishing, 1999
- Page, Robert Morris; The Origin of Radar, Doubleday & Company, 1962
- Watson, Raymond C., Jr.; Radar Origins Worldwide, Trafford Publishing, 2009
External links
- Naval Research Laboratory Seventy-Five Years of High Stakes Science and Technology