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Origins of Baddow

Page history last edited by Alan Hartley-Smith 4 months, 1 week ago

The Dowding System

 

 

The origins of the Display and Data Handling Laboratories at Baddow, later called the Datamation Laboratories and which subsequently became an integral part of Radar Division and then of Marconi Radar Systems Limited.

Section K (R. J. Kemp) was originally set up in a hut (which became the carpenters shop) in the fields to the north east of the present A Block, whilst this the only main building of the time was under construction, to study television techniques.

A specially arranged lab. was set up in Room 121 with dark room facilities, but these were hardly used by the outbreak of the second world war.  This lab. became a workshop.  The staff of this Section moved into Room 124 to share this room with Section E (Eckersley) and to provide equipment to support the propagation, DF and listening activities.  Resident RAF and WRNS personnel staffed the DF sites; the Propagation Bureau was staffed by all three services and latterly with the addition of the USAF.

On site to build and install the equipment was a detachment of RAF Wireless Operator Mechanics.  They built a great many spaced frame mobile DF sets and installed then in vehicles.    Gill was the flight sergeant, John Felton was the sergeant and Cross the driver.

The television expertise was devoted to the production of special displays for panoramic receivers, (Fewings) linear and circular DF displays for various systems including H.F. Adcocks, VHF Adcocks, crossed BT loops (Simons) and an attempt at an electronically scanned DF display (O'Neill).  Most of the circular displays used goniometers to generate the scan, which was amplitude modulated to give a figure of eight, or by quadrature a heart sense tail superimposed picture.

This work required the production of special oscilloscopes and the OR2, became a standard used widely with Marconi Adcock DF installations, superseded later by the OR3 devised by Ian Forbes.

 



TYPE D.F.G.26 RECEIVER WITH OSCILLOSCOPE TYPE O.R.3, 1945


The only radar type work was a low power pulsed radar which continuously measured the height of the ionosphere using a simple A-scope.

Almost immediately after the cessation of hostilities, it was announced that 'we were going to do radar'.

There was a requirement for the Marine Company to attempt to enter the merchant marine radar market and there was an order to fit the LMS (London Midland andScottishrailway) ships, which sailed between Heysham and Belfast daily.

The Marine Company did not have its own development staff and sub contracted development to the Telegraph Company.  The marine development team at New Street under James Watt was only expert in depth sounders and marine communications so the work was placed on Research at Baddow.


Shortly after this R. J. Kemp increased his responsibilities as Deputy Chief of Research (to J. G. Robb) and B. J. Witt was put in charge of the section, (plus Lambert and Golding, all of whom had worked directly for Marconi)

At about this time, Fred Garrett returned from secondment to the Admiralty, bringing expertise in modulators and Shipway, (previously a lecturer at Marconi College) returned, bringing a significant amount of expertise in the latest circuit techniques, gained in the RAF at Malvern and which prior to that time were only known to secure projects especially H2S and the work of Blumlein.

The first Radiolocator was effectively a rework of the American Type 268 or Canadian 972.  The display of the 268 was generated using an area balanced waveform resolved in three phase by a synchro with the stator of another synchro placed round the neck of a CRT.  We used rather better resolvers and coils than the original, but the design suffered from providing only a centred picture, with only fractional off centering possible using external deflectors. There was also a difficulty in generating a fast scan of say 10 sec for a 1 mile presentation, as the waveform had, in principle, to travel up and down the mast on the way to the display.

Some members of Section K and Section E left to join L. H. Bedford who had arrived to launch the English Electric Company into domestic television and the 1550 TV receiver was designed and put into production.

The Radiolocator Mark 2 was a totally revised design.  All units were new and used the latest technology available and the latest valves.  This design required up to date test equipment and as a by product we designed an oscilloscope which had much better performance than any available and which was for many years the standard in the laboratories and in production test.  Again this used ‘modern’ circuit technology to great effect.  The radar display used a rotating coil as part of the deflection system, driven via a gearbox, which incorporated compass correction from an M motor and electro mechanical auto alignment of the display to the ship's head.

The Radiolocator Mark 2 was the prototype of the Mark 3, which was subsequently engineered by Marine Development in New Street and had a successful market life.

Following on this work, the members of Section K were merged with those of Section C (Colchester), with Colchester in charge.  A version using Radiolocator parts was built for Jersey Airport, but using a larger (14 inch) fluoride CRT and with the DF bearing superimposed on the display.  This was the first ATC equipment supplied by the Company and again it stayed in service for many years.

The Admiralty placed a contract on the company, which was called POSTAL.  The development contract which subsequently became the Naval 984 radar.  The Baddow display contribution resulting from the experience in the design of oscilloscopes was the design of a monitor to display the many transmitter waveforms.  (It was from this work that I was later extracted, to become the Project manager of the radar display system for ROTOR, to be known as Console Type 64.  See below)


At about this time, 1948, Eric Eastwood had arrived in Baddow from Stafford NRL with the Type 11 contract and took up his appointment as Deputy Chief of Research (to R. J. Kemp).  Almost immediately, the Company received the study to examine the refurbishment of the wartime Radar Chain.  Colchester joined the study team and Shipway assumed charge of the Display work.  

As a result of the study, the Company, through Services Equipment Division, received the contract to carry out the majority of the equipment refit or redesign and RDG (Radar Development Group) was set up at Pottery Lane, Broomfield, under Hugh Wassell, with a team which grew very quickly to meet the urgent requirement to refit the CEW and CHEL radar sites.

At the same time, TRE (Telecommunication Research Establishment, the Royal Air force unit, at Great Malvern) was investigating data handling, to enable better tracking of targets by radar, using telephone exchange techniques.  A display was needed which would allow extra markers to be displayed, in addition to the raw radar, data and preliminary work had been done at Malvern.  A contract to develop this display requirement was placed on Baddow (via SED) and the Display and Data-handling Laboratories under Shipway was created.


At this time, RRDE (Radar Research and Development Establishment, the army unit, also at Great Malvern) were devoting effort to the same display requirement for Orange Yeoman, and ASE Witley were similarly working on a display using an EEV metal cone tube for the projected Type 984 radar, STC were designing a PAR and Kelvin Hughes an intermediate film photographic projector.  There was literally no collaboration between the parts of the ministry, who were directing this work, or the contractors; it only came together when all the contracts and contractors wanted the same CRT.  The farce that then occurred is another story.

Roy Simons June 2004

 

A wartime series of investigations in assocation with the Defence Electronics History Society.

 

Roy Simons

Comments (1)

Ian Gillis said

at 5:46 pm on Feb 12, 2016

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