 | Eugene Kaspersky |
 | Eugene Buyakin |
 | Nikolay Grebennikov |
 | Andrei Tikhonov |
 | Roger Wilson |
 | Daniil Borschev |
 | Tatyana Solovyeva |
 | Stephane Le Hir |
 | Keith Maskell |
 | Petr Merkulov |
 |
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Management Team Of Kaspersky Lab
Monday, November 24, 2008
Season
One bird is flying up in the sky: You can see the movements but wings are just not flapping! It is spread and covering the flying area. However, we know that the bird is flying but it's flying is silent and with proper and adequate pace: No hurry! A silent movement is on, moment by moment in the sky! We are used to say; ‘What a peaceful flight!'
Yes! That is right! The bird reached up high in the sky and enjoying being there, feeling the vastness around it's flying area as well as performing effortless fly! What a peaceful flight! This is a natural phenomena considering bird life on our planet!
We have mind for flying, freedom and fragrance! We all use it with our own responsibility as well as our own risk! Here lies the key of our mind, its activities and its range! We are humans because of this mind evolved in us! Our existence on this earth has an evolutionary significance because of mind! The mind has widened the range of existence on this earth. However, the characteristic of the mind has some risk also with its evolutionary opening! The yogis and spiritualist has named this risk as a habit! The mind has tremendous possibilities but it becomes habituated. This is the main risk as well as its desires and demanding condition also create an unknown risk of being unsteady!
We know that after manifestation of mind and its related activities life has become more meaningful at a point with its expressive forms and progressive achievements! These are facts and we cannot deny! But at the same time we must accept that all our problems also started with these benefits and advancement of the mind! Our evolutionary processes affected life and living standards and by innovative things as well as inventions, we have tried to explore the mind! Mind and intelligence works together and its processes are known as a complex matter because desire always promotes for doing and activating things with the help of intelligence and take the lead in the process!
The Mind and intelligence have established ethical point of views as well as norms and regulations regarding societies and living for all! But the games of power and rulling and to possess the things are the drawbacks to make the things easy and available for all! We know by the parallel thinking and expressing the reality finger out by so many creative people! And the peace in between sandwiched with so many things till today! So to get the peace become more and more complex matter because the process to gain the peace is different than to get all the things regarding so called happiness and material gains!
Yes, there may be more reasons to count man -made anti-peace elements. But all such has made clear that peace is necessary as well as peaceful mind can do something more different and positive. That's why we have said and named such persons wise man and what ever they have gained is called wisdom!
There should not be any kind of wisdom and wise things if humans have not recognized, searched, found and established peaceful mind actively on our planet! At the same time such humans are rare and now in this modern world the need of peace is increased like anything because of inside imbalances occurred now in day-to-day life frequently!
Perhaps we learn more about peace through this way, by increasing peace less activities and processes!!(?) Perhaps human mind realizes peace after certain kind of odd occurrences of peace less situation! Perhaps we go in to our deep zone when it comes to at a point when something goes very wrong and we feel the need of peace in mind and so we start to think about peaceful mind!!
Well we can say this irony of human life and fate, but there is a positive aspect of experience and learning through experience! Let's put the thing this way that we have passed through these kinds of occurrences for peace and to gain and / or to retain the peaceful mind!
Now let's prepare ourselves by this way:
O universal mind!
Please hold on your vivid occurrences
Which are blowing our individual minds
And stop all nonlinear waves
To help the peace to penetrate inside
Each individual mind for making them peaceful!
After all that process will help you also
For the betterment of manifestation of
The real upper mind in everyone
Sunday, November 23, 2008
BAN KI-MOON
Ban Ki-moon of the Republic of Korea, the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations, brings to his post 37 years of service both in Government and on the global stage.
Career highlights
At the time of his election as Secretary-General, Mr. Ban was his country's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade. His long tenure with the Ministry included postings in New Delhi, Washington D.C. and Vienna, and responsibility for a variety of portfolios, including Foreign Policy Adviser to the President, Chief National Security Adviser to the President, Deputy Minister for Policy Planning and Director-General of American Affairs. Throughout this service, his guiding vision was that of a peaceful Korean peninsula, playing an expanding role for peace and prosperity in the region and the wider world.
Mr. Ban has long-standing ties with the United Nations, dating back to 1975, when he worked for the Foreign Ministry's United Nations Division. That work expanded over the years, with assignments as First Secretary at the Republic of Korea's Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, Director of the United Nations Division at the Ministry's headquarters in Seoul and Ambassador to Vienna, during which time, in 1999, he served as Chairman of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization. In 2001-2002, as Chef de Cabinet during the Republic of Korea's presidency of the General Assembly, he facilitated the prompt adoption of the first resolution of the session, condemning the terrorist attacks of 11 September, and undertook a number of initiatives aimed at strengthening the Assembly's functioning, thereby helping to turn a session that started out in crisis and confusion into one in which a number of important reforms were adopted.
Mr. Ban has also been actively involved in issues relating to inter-Korean relations. In 1992, as Special Adviser to the Foreign Minister, he served as Vice-Chair of the South-North Joint Nuclear Control Commission following the adoption of the historic Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. In September 2005, as Foreign Minister, he played a leading role in bringing about another landmark agreement aimed at promoting peace and stability on the Korean peninsula with the adoption at the six-party talks of the Joint Statement on resolving the North Korean nuclear issue.
Education
Mr. Ban received a bachelor's degree in international relations from Seoul National University in 1970. In 1985, he earned a master's degree in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In July 2008, Mr. Ban received an honorary Doctoral Degree from Seoul National University.
Prizes and awards
Mr. Ban has received numerous national and international prizes, medals and honours. In 1975, 1986 and again in 2006, he was awarded the Republic of Korea's Highest Order of Service Merit for service to his country. In April 2008, he was awarded the dignity of the “Grand-Croix de L'Ordre National” (Grand Cross of the National Order) in Burkina Faso, and in the same month received the “Grand Officier de L'Ordre National” (Grand Officer of the National Order) from the Government of Côte d'Ivoire.
Personal
Mr. Ban was born on 13 June 1944. He and his wife, Madam Yoo (Ban) Soon-taek, whom he met in high school in 1962, have one son and two daughters. In addition to Korean, Mr. Ban speaks English and French.
Love Letters
Famous love letters
Famous love letter by Lewis Carroll
Christ Church, Oxford, October 28, 1876
My Dearest Gertrude:
You will be sorry, and surprised, and puzzled, to hear what a queer illness I have had ever since you went. I sent for the doctor, and said, "Give me some medicine. for I'm tired." He said, "Nonsense and stuff! You don't want medicine: go to bed!" 
I said, "No; it isn't the sort of tiredness that wants bed. I'm tired in the face." He looked a little grave, and said, "Oh, it's your nose that's tired: a person often talks too much when he thinks he knows a
great deal." I said, "No, it isn't the nose. Perhaps it's the hair." Then he looked rather grave, and said, "Now I understand: you've been playing too many hairs on the pianoforte."
"No, indeed I haven't!" I said, "and it isn't exactly the hair: it's more about the nose and chin." Then he looked a good deal graver, and said, "Have you been walking much on your chin lately?" I said, "No." "Well!" he said, "it puzzles me very much.
Do you think it's in the lips?" "Of course!" I said. "That's exactly what it is!"
Then he looked very grave indeed, and said, "I think you must have been giving too many kisses." "Well," I said, "I did give one kiss to a baby child, a little friend of mine."
"Think again," he said; "are you sure it was only one?" I thought again, and said, "Perhaps it was eleven times." Then the doctor said, "You must not give her any more till your lips are quite rested
again." "But what am I to do?" I said, "because you see, I owe her a hundred and eighty-two more." Then he looked so grave that tears ran down his cheeks, and he said, "You may send them to her in a box."
Then I remembered a little box that I once bought at Dover, and thought I would someday give it to some little girl or other. So I have packed them all in it very carefully. Tell me if they come safe or if any are lost on the way."
Lewis Carroll
Famous love letter by Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), one of history's most famous and mysterious composers died at the age of 57 with one great secret. Upon his death, a love letter was found among his possessions. It was written to an unknown woman who Beethoven simply called his *Immortal Beloved.*
The world may never put a face with this mysterious woman or know the circumstances of their affair and his letters are all that is left of a love as intensely passionate as the music for which Beethoven became famous. Compositions such as the Moonlight Sonata as well as Beethoven's many symphonies express eloquently the tragedy of a
relationship never publicly realized.
July 6, 1806
My angel, my all, my very self -- only a few words today and at that with your pencil -- not till tomorrow will my lodgings be definitely determined upon -- what a useless waste of time. Why this deep sorrow where necessity speaks -- can our love endure except through sacrifices -- except through not demanding everything -- can you change it that you are not wholly mine, I not wholly thine?
Oh, God! look out into the beauties of nature and comfort yourself with that which must be -- love demands everything and that very justly -- that it is with me so far as you are concerned, and you with
me. If we were wholly united you would feel the pain of it as little as I!
Now a quick change to things internal from things external. We shall surely see each other; moreover, I cannot communicate to you the observations I have made during the last few days touching my own life -- if our hearts were always close together I would make none of the kind. My heart is full of many things to say to you - Ah! -- there are moments when I feel that speech is nothing after all -- cheer up -- remain my true, only treasure, my all as I am yours; the gods must send us the rest that which shall be best for us.
Your faithful,
Ludwig
Famous love letter by Napolean Bonaparte
In addition to being a brilliant military mind and feared ruler, Napolean Bonaparte (1763 - 1821) was a prolific writer of letters. He reportedly wrote as many as 75,000 letters in his lifetime, many of them to his beautiful wife, Josephine, both before and during their marriage. This letter, written just prior to their 1796 wedding, shows surprising tenderness and emotion from the future emperor.
Paris, December 1795
I wake filled with thoughts of you. Your portrait and the intoxicating evening which we spent yesterday have left my senses in turmoil. Sweet, incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have on my heart! Are you angry? Do I see you looking sad? Are you worried?... My soul aches with sorrow, and there can be no rest for you lover; but is there still more in store for me when, yielding to the profound feelings which overwhelm me, I draw from your lips, from your heart a love which consumes me with fire? Ah! it was last night that I fully realized how false an image of you your portrait gives!
You are leaving at noon; I shall see you in three hours.
Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire.
Letter to the Widow Bixby, November 21, 1864
Lincoln complied, and the letter was later printed by the Boston Evening Transcript. However, after the letter became public it was revealed that only two of Mrs. Bixby's five sons had died in battle, Oliver at Petersburg and Charles at Fredericksburg. Henry, who had been reported as killed at Gettysburg, actually had survived. He spent time as a prisoner of war, then made his way to Cuba, after which nothing is known of him. A fourth son, George, had also been reported killed at Petersburg with his brother Oliver. That report proved to be false. George had volunteered under the name George Way, using his middle name as his last, so his wife would not know of his enlistment. The fifth son, Edward, had also been erroneously reported killed in South Carolina, but alive and well, he was honorably discharged and moved to Boston.
The letter was featured prominently in the recent blockbuster movie, Saving Private Ryan, in which it was read in its entirety.
Historians have long debated the authorship of the letter. Some believe that the letter was actually written by Lincoln, but others insist that it was penned by John Hay, one of Lincoln's secretaries. The original letter has long been lost, and therefore can not be checked. However, in 1904 Hay said that Lincoln had, indeed, been the letter’s author. Until proof is offered one way or the other, the authorship is left to the reader’s imagination.
Following is the text of the letter to Mrs. Bixby:
Executive Mansion,
Washington, November 21, 1864.
Dear Madam,
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln
Letter to George G. Meade, July 14, 1863
Lincoln
Executive Mansion,
Washington, July 14, 1863.
Major General Meade
I have just seen your despatch to Gen. Halleck, asking to be relieved of your command, because of a supposed censure of mine. I am very--very--grateful to you for the magnificent success you gave the cause of the country at Gettysburg; and I am sorry now to be the author of the slightest pain to you. But I was in such deep distress myself that I could not restrain some expression of it. I had been oppressed nearly ever since the battles at Gettysburg, by what appeared to be evidences that yourself, and Gen. Couch, and Gen. Smith, were not seeking a collision with the enemy, but were trying to get him across the river without another battle. What these evidences were, if you please, I hope to tell you at some time, when we shall both feel better. The case, summarily stated is this. You fought and beat the enemy at Gettysburg; and, of course, to say the least, his loss was as great as yours. He retreated; and you did not, as it seemed to me, pressingly pursue him; but a flood in the river detained him, till, by slow degrees, you were again upon him. You had at least twenty thousand veteran troops directly with you, and as many more raw ones within supporting distance, all in addition to those who fought with you at Gettysburg; while it was not possible that he had received a single recruit; and yet you stood and let the flood run down, bridges be built, and the enemy move away at his leisure, without attacking him. And Couch and Smith! The latter left Carlisle in time, upon all ordinary calculation, to have aided you in the last battle at Gettysburg; but he did not arrive. At the end of more than ten days, I believe twelve, under constant urging, he reached Hagerstown from Carlisle, which is not an inch over fifty five miles, if so much. And Couch's movement was very little different.
Again, my dear general, I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee's escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not safely attack Lee last monday, how can you possibly do so South of the river, when you can take with you very few more than two thirds of the force you then had in hand? It would be unreasonable to expect, and I do not expect you can now effect much. Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed immeasurably because of it.
I beg you will not consider this a prosecution, or persecution of yourself. As you had learned that I was dissatisfied, I have thought it best to kindly tell you why.
Yours very truly,
A Lincoln
Saturday, November 22, 2008
The Trojan War
The Trojan War has its roots in the marriage between Peleus and Thetis, a sea-goddess. Peleus and Thetis had not invited Eris, the goddess of discord, to their marriage and the outraged goddess stormed into the wedding banquet and threw a golden apple onto the table. The apple belonged to, Eris said, whomever was the fairest.
Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite each reached for the apple. Zeus proclaimed that Paris, prince of Troy and thought to be the most beautiful man alive, would act as the judge.
Hermes went to Paris, and Paris agreed to act as the judge. Hera promised him power, Athena promised him wealth, and Aphrodite promised the most beautiful woman in the world.
Paris chose Aphrodite, and she promised him that Helen, wife of Menelaus, would be his wife. Paris then prepared to set off for Sparta to capture Helen. Twin prophets Cassandra and Helenus tried to persuade him against such action, as did his mother, Hecuba. But Paris would not listen and he set off for Sparta.
In Sparta, Menelaus, husband of Helen, treated Paris as a royal guest. However, when Menelaus left Sparta to go to a funeral, Paris abducted Helen (who perhaps went willingly) and also carried off much of Menelaus' wealth.
In Troy, Helen and Paris were married. This occured around 1200 B.C. (Wood, 16).
Menelaus, however, was outraged to find that Paris had taken Helen. Menelaus then called upon all of Helen's old suitors, as all of the suitors had made an oath long ago that they would all back Helen's husband to defend her honor.
Many of the suitors did not wish to go to war. Odysseus pretended to be insane but this trick was uncovered by Palamedes. Achilles, though not one of the previous suitors, was sought after because the seer Calchas had stated that Troy would not be taken unless Achilles would fight.
One of the most interesting stories is of Cinyras, king of Paphos, in Cyprus, who had been a suitor of Helen. He did not wish to go to war, but promised Agamemnon fifty ships for the Greek fleet. True to his word, Cinyras did send fifty ships. The first ship was commanded by his son. The other forty-nine, however, were toy clay ships, with tiny clay sailors. They dissembled soon after being placed in the ocean (Tripp, 584-584).
The Greek fleet assembled, under Agamemnon's inspection, in Aulis. However, Agamemnon either killed one of Diana's sacred stags or made a careless boast. Either way, Diana was outraged and she calmed the seas so that the fleet could not take off.
The seer Calchas proclaimed that Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon, must be sacrificed before the fleet could set sail. This was done, and the Greek ships set off in search of Troy.
Finding Troy proved difficult, however, and the Greek fleet at first landed in Mysia. According to Herodotus, the Greeks were under the impression that Helen had been taken by the Teuthranians (Teucrians), and though the Teuthranians denied such allegations, the Greeks layed siege to the city (Herodotus, Bk. II.118). The Greeks ultimately prevailed, but suffered heavy casualties at the hands of Telephus, king of the Teuthranians, and, at the end, were still without Helen. Telephus, in the course of the war, was wounded by Achilles.
With no where else to turn, the Greeks returned home.
The Trojan War might not have happened had not Telephus gone to Greece in the hopes of having his wound cured. Telephus had been told by an oracle that only the person who wounded him (in this case, Achilles) could cure him. Achilles assented and Telephus told the Greeks how to get to Troy.
Odysseus, known for his eloquence, and Menelaus were sent as ambassadors to Priam. They demanded Helen and the stolen treasure be returned. Priam refused, and Odysseus and Menelaus returned to the Greek ships with the announcement that war was inevitable.
The first nine years of the war consisted of both war in Troy and war against the neighboring regions. The Greeks realized that Troy was being supplied by its neighboring kingdoms, so Greeks were sent to defeat these areas.
As well as destroying Trojan economy, these battles let the Greeks gather a large amount of resources and other spoils of war, including women (e.g., Briseis, Tecmessa and Chryseis).
The Greeks won many important battles and the Trojan hero Hector fell, as did the Trojan ally Penthesilea. However, the Greeks could not break down the walls of Troy.
Patroclus was killed and, soonafter, Achilles was felled by Paris.
Helenus, son of Priam, had been captured by Odysseus. A prophet, Helenus told the Greeks that Troy would not fall unless:
a) Pyrrhus, Achilles' son, fought in the war,
b) The bow and arrows of Hercules were used by the Greeks against the Trojans,
c) The remains of Pelops, the famous Eleian hero, were brought to Troy, and
d) The Palladium, a statue of Athena, was stolen from Troy (Tripp, 587).
Phoenix persuaded Pyrrhus to join the war. Philoctetes had the bow and arrows of Hercules, but had been left by the Greek fleet in Lemnos because he had been bitten by a snake and his wound had a horrendous smell. Philoctetes was bitter, but was finally persuaded to join the Greeks. The remains of Pelops were gotten, and Odysseus infiltrated Trojan defenses and stole the Palladium.
Still seeking to gain entrance into Troy, clever Odysseus (some say with the aid of Athena) ordered a large wooden horse to be built. Its insides were to be hollow so that soldiers could hide within it.
Once the statue had been built by the artist Epeius, a number of the Greek warriors, along with Odysseus, climbed inside. The rest of the Greek fleet sailed away, so as to deceive the Trojans.
One man, Sinon, was left behind. When the Trojans came to marvel at the huge creation, Sinon pretended to be angry with the Greeks, stating that they had deserted him. He assured the Trojans that the wooden horse was safe and would bring luck to the Trojans.
Only two people, Laocoon and Cassandra, spoke out against the horse, but they were ignored. The Trojans celebrated what they thought was their victory, and dragged the wooden horse into Troy.
That night, after most of Troy was asleep or in a drunken stupor, Sinon let the Greek warriors out from the horse, and they slaughtered the Trojans. Priam was killed as he huddled by Zeus' altar and Cassandra was pulled from the statue of Athena and raped.
After the war, Polyxena, daughter of Priam, was sacrificed at the tomb of Achilles and Astyanax, son of Hector, was also sacrificed, signifying the end of the war.
Aeneas, a Trojan prince, managed to escape the destruction of Troy, and Virgil's Aeneid tells of his flight from Troy. Many sources say that Aeneas was the only Trojan prince to survive, but this statement contradicts the common story that Andromache was married to Helenus, twin of Cassandra, after the war.
Menelaus, who had been determined to kill his faithless wife, was soon taken by Helen's beauty and seductiveness that he allowed her to live.
The surviving Trojan women were divided among the Greek men along with the other plunder. The Greeks then set sail for home, which, for some, proved as difficult and took as much time as the Trojan War itself (e.g., Odysseus and Menelaus).
The Successful
| Four secrets of the successful job search |
 |
It is the specific decision on your career that counts. The more you are accurate about your destination, the more successful you are.
With 4 strategic secrets below, surely you will get better results more than simply responding passively with advertisements in mass media or trying to keep an unattractive jobs.
Secret 1: Know where to look for jobs
While employers still use headhunters to vet candidates, especially for senior positions, increasingly they are relying on resume scanning software and online "assessment" tests to do an initial sort of the wheat from the chaff.
And rather than posting an opening on general jobs site, which can bring in too many you-must-be-joking candidates, companies are using jobs sites or parts of jobs sites that are specific to their industry, said Mark Bartz, co founder of resume and job-search consulting firm Executive Careers Inc.
They're also beefing up their corporate sites so potential hires with a specific interest in a company may submit resumes.
Increasingly, too, job seekers may submit resumes for a type of job rather than a specific job opening, said Ginny Gomez, vice president of product management of Peopleclick, a recruiting software and consulting firm.
When a job does open up, HR will electronically sort through the resumes looking for key words to find attractive candidates, Bartz said.
When you do use a corporate site to submit your resume, you may be asked a series of questions designed to give the employer some sense of whether your personality is a good fit for the type of job you're seeking and to test your advertised skills.
"(The questions) are an ever-growing component to a company's recruiting strategy and knowing this, candidates should know that by not completing an assessment, they are removing themselves from consideration," Gomez said.
Secret 2: Ensure a company wants to talk to you
Tailor your resume so that it highlights high up your experience relevant to the job or type of job in question. Make it easy on the person reading it to figure out why they should consider you, said Phil Carpenter, vice president of marketing at SimplyHired.com, a jobs search engine.
One way to do that is to "stress results, not activities," said Amy Hoover, executive vice president of TalentZoo, a recruiter specializing in communications jobs.
Your goal is to get the person who eventually reads your resume (and cover letter) to ask, "How did you do that?" said Mark Bartz, co-founder of resume and job-search consulting firm Executive Careers Inc.
What will set you apart from your competition is to give an answer that not only speaks to your education, training and experience, but also to soft skills that you possess but that can't be easily taught, such as intuition, discernment, creativity and resourcefulness. "That's the X factor that gets you the job," he said.
But the only way you'll ever be asked the question is if your resume makes it through the early lines of defense, which may very well be resume scanning software, which looks for key words or phrases specific to the nature of the job you'd like and the industry it's in.
Bartz recommends branding yourself on your resume and cover letter - for example, as "a product marketing manager with expertise in product branding, market research and team-building."
Then pick out from your past work experience 12 to 20 key words or phrases that amplify each of those areas of expertise. For instance, for market research, you might have worked on projects involving "demographic analysis" or a "product life-cycle."
Secret 3: Demonstrate that you want the job
Saying that you want a position and showing it are two different things.
What will distinguish you from other candidates is, for starters, a cover letter that lets the recipient know you've actually spent time thinking about the company's business and the role you could play in it if you're hired, said Phil Carpenter, vice president of marketing at SimplyHired.com, a jobs search engine.
Beyond that, before or after an interview, put something together to show the company how you think it might market its product better or improve its service, said Amy Hoover, executive vice president of TalentZoo, a recruiter specializing in communications jobs. "It will set you apart from the competition."
In an interview, highlight the successful projects you worked on in which you had the most fun because your passion will come through, and that is a trait companies want to see, said Mark Bartz, co-founder of resume and job-search consulting firm Executive Careers Inc.
Secret 4: Sticking about tried-and-true
There's nothing like having an "in" at a company as opposed to just going through HR channels. If you don't know someone personally at a company, you might find a connection through one of the business-focused networking sites such as LinkedIn and NetShare, said Mark Bartz, co-founder of resume and job-search consulting firm Executive Careers Inc.
Once you do get an interview, give the interviewer something to remember you by, such as a sample of a successful project you worked on, said Phil Carpenter, vice president of marketing at SimplyHired.com, a jobs search engine.
Courtesy is as an asset. "A proper handshake and thank-you-for-your-time goes a long way," said Amy Hoover, executive vice president of TalentZoo, a recruiting firm specializing in communications jobs. And be sure to email a thank-you note within 24 hours after an interview.
And you should not be disappointed if you failed for many times. Actually, there are many successful people having to spend a lot of time to look for a good job.
What you need to do is to continue with above procedures and make any change if essential. You should periodically reevaluate the cover letter, resume, searching methods and industries you are to join.
These will keep you on the track and reduce useless effortsHo Chi Minh (1890-1969)
Ho Chi Minh (originally Nguyen That Thanh) was born on 19 May 1890 in Hoang Tru in central Vietnam. Vietnam was then a French colony, known as French Indo-China, but under the nominal rule of an emperor. Ho's father worked at the imperial court but was dismissed for criticising the French colonial power.
In 1911, Ho took a job on a French ship and travelled widely. He lived in London and Paris, and was a founding member of the French communist party. In 1923 he visited Moscow for training at Comintern, an organisation created by Lenin to promote worldwide revolution. He travelled to southern China to organise a revolutionary movement among Vietnamese exiles, and in 1930 founded the Indo-Chinese Communist Party (ICP). He spent the 1930s in Russia and China.
After the Japanese invasion of Indo-China in 1941, Ho returned home and founded the Viet Minh, a communist-dominated independence movement, to fight the Japanese. He adopted the name Ho Chi Minh, meaning 'Bringer of Light'.
At the end of World War Two the Viet Minh announced Vietnamese independence. The French refused to relinquish their colony and in 1946, war broke out. After eight years of war, the French were forced to agree to peace talks in Geneva. The country was split into a communist north and non-communist south and Ho became president of North Vietnam. He was determined to reunite Vietnam under communist rule.
By the early 1960s, North Vietnamese-backed guerrillas, the Vietcong, were attacking the South Vietnamese government. Fearing the spread of communism, the United States provided increasing levels of support to South Vietnam. By 1965, large numbers of American troops were arriving and the fighting escalated into a major conflict.
Ho Chi Minh was in poor health from the mid 1960s and died on 2 September 1969. When the Communists took the South Vietnamese capital Saigon in 1975 they renamed it Ho Chi Minh City in his honour.
Introduction to Bali
The Bali strait separated Bali from East Java on the western side. Meanwhile, the Lombok strait on the eastern side separated Bali and Lombok. Administratively, the Province of Bali is divided into 9 districts (8 regencies and 1 municipality), 51 sub districts, 565 villages, and 79 local political districts.
Geographically, Bali is located at 80-30’-40" to 80-50’-48" south of the equator and 1140-25’-53" to 1150-42’-40" east longitude.
Bali's relief and topography have their main features of a mountain range that transverse the island from west to east. Among those mountains are two of significant sizes: Agung ( 3,140 m ) and Batur (1,717 m).
Bali also has four lakes: Beratan (375.6 Ha), Buyan (336 Ha), Tamblingan (11 Ha), and Batur (1,607.5). Rivers, which have their sources on these lakes as well as forests, flow to the southern side of the island. Among these rivers are: Ayung, Ho, Loloan, Pakerisan, Petanu, Pulukan, and Unda.
Bali has a tropical climate, which is influenced by seasonal wind pattern and alternate every six months. There are two seasons: the dry season (April - October) and the wet season (October - April). Temperatures vary from 24 °C to 30.8 °C. Rainfall during the last five years ranged between 893.4 mm and 2,702.6 mm.
Humidity averages are 90 %, during the wet season as high as 100 % and in the dry season around 60 %.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
John Paul II
Born in Wadowice, Poland, Pope John Paul II was one of our most extraordinarily dedicated popes, and one especially loved by Polish Catholics for what he did for his countrymen. Exploration of some of the hidden mysteries of his genogram may help us understand his spiritual dedication and his contribution to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe during his reign as Pope. Examining genograms for the often overlooked legacies of untimely loss, and cultural dynamics that intersect with family history may help us to understand a person?s role and character. In Pope John Paul?s case, untimely losses traumatized his family for at least two generations, including the loss of both of his siblings, and his parents? early loss of both of their mothers and several siblings.John Paul?s mother, Emilia Kaczorowski, lost her own mother when she was 13 years old. From that time on she shared in the care of her siblings, four of whom died before reaching the age of 30. It appears that these early losses shaped her psyche, as she was afterward said to be of ?delicate health,? ?melancholy? temperament, and ?very religious? (a common outcome of being faced with the mystery of death at such an early age).
One of the aspects of genograms we look at most closely is how the mysteries of one person?s genogram intersect with the mysteries in the genogram of the partner they choose to marry. As a young adult, Emilia met Karol Wojtyla, a pious and serious Lieutenant in the Polish Army, while lighting candles and praying in their local church; their spiritual connection was present from the start. She was apparently drawn to his steady character, seriousness, self-discipline, and strength. But perhaps at a deeper level their connection was forged on a common history of pain and loss. Karol too had experienced the tragic loss of his mother when he was just three years old, and his own father would later die when their son was only three years old.Emilia and Karol were married in 1904. Surely they hoped they were leaving their history of tragic loss behind them as they bore a beautiful, healthy, and delightful son, Edmund, in 1906. He was ?bright, handsome, athletic, even-tempered, and helpful.? (Bernstein & Politi, p19).
They had no more children as far as is known until 1914 when a daughter was born, whom they was named Olga, after Emilia?s favorite sister who had died at age 22. Here is one of the most intriguing aspects of exploring the mysteries of genograms. We always look for gaps in information to help us raise questions about what information might be missing. Missing information often relates to traumas that people try to leave out of their stories. When looking at this family?s genogram, we see that the couple had no other children during that 10 year period, an uncommon pattern for this time. Were there perhaps other pregnancies which resulted in miscarriage, stillbirth or early childhood death? We do not know for sure, but it seems likely that there were other pregnancies and losses during those years. If so, how was the couple affected by this series of untimely loss?
We do know that in 1914, the family was once again revisited by tragedy; young Olga did not survive her first year. However, again there are mysteries: we do not know how long she lived because no baptism certificate or birth records were ever found, and she is not buried in the family tomb. Why were there no records and why was she not buried with the rest of the family? Such would certainly have been the religious custom. Could there have been financial problems? Or was it because of the war since World War I was going on at that time? Also, we may learn about mysteries of a family from their naming patterns. We might wonder about the relationship between Emilia and her sister Olga for whom she named her daughter, and about the impact of having lost the daughter who shared such a connection with Emilia?s sister, Olga?s namesake? Reportedly, Emilia?s was said to have been stricken by grief and her health declined even further from this point on.
The children born following the death of a sibling often have special significance in the family, so exploring the sibling patterns, particularly around loss, is a major clue to unraveling family mysteries, as illustrated by the sibling pattern of Karol Jozef Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II. He was born May 18, 1920, just 6 years after years after his sister?s death, and significantly, his birth was on the very day when Poland was liberated from the Soviet Union by Marshal Jozef Pilsudski. May 18, 1920, was ?a day of great significance for the Poles, a day called the Polish Miracle. On that day, Marshal Jozef Pilsudski struck a deciding blow in the war against the Soviet Union and seized Kiev. It was Poland's first major military victory in over two centuries. It set in motion events which briefly restored Poland's independence. Mindful of the nation's turning point, Karol's father gave his new son Pilsudski's middle name. Some people said he also called Karol "Josef" after Mary's self-sacrificing husband. The confluence of history and religion were significant, as was the moment of Karol's birth.? (Barnes & Whitney, 1999).
The timing of Karol?s birth was thus profoundly significant on two levels. For the family it was a rebirth after a death, and for Poland it was a national rebirth after two centuries of having been annihilated by foreigners. It is for this reason that we always want to track cultural history on a genogram and see where it intersects with family history, just as we would want to note a baby born on Christmas or on the anniversary of a national tragedy.
with their child Edmund
But tragedy struck again, just as it had for both parents in their childhoods. At age 8, while Karol was away at school, Emilia suddenly died of kidney and liver failure. The news shocked him into a withdrawn melancholy, but deepened his bond with his father and his older brother, Edmund, who was away studying medicine at Jagiellonian University. The father became even more involved in the life of his sons. He wanted the best for their education and future, and invested all his energy in their spiritual and character development instilling in them self-discipline, dedication, and a deep religious piety.
Karol Jr. forged a special connection with his brother, Edmund. He admired and adored his successful and charming older brother and was thrilled to attend Edmund?s graduation from medical school. Once Edmund began medical practice, Karol Jr. would volunteer to entertain Edmund?s patients at the hospital with his acting skills and creativity, getting to spend extra time with his beloved brother.
But tragedy was not far away. Four years after the mother?s death, on December 5, 1932, Edmund died of Scarlet Fever, which he had contracted it through his self-sacrificial caring for his patients. Karol was broken hearted. He and his father, being the final survivors in the family, became even more intensely connected, and when it was time for Karol to attend Jagiellonian University in Krakow in 1938, his father moved with him to Krakow so he could continue to support his only surviving child. One wonders if this was something he had done with his own father after his own mother?s death or perhaps a connection he had wished to have.
Karol Sr. had instilled in his son a love of order and discipline, which they cultivated in their mutual routine of prayer and study each morning, meals together, shared walks in the evening, and discussion of ideas and the day?s learning prior to bed. After their devastating losses, they must have hoped they would finally have a respite from their grief, but this would not be so. The Nazi?s closed the university in 1939, arresting many of the faculty, and Karol had to support himself by various kinds of forced manual labor. Then on February 18, 1941, Karol Sr. died suddenly of a heart attack while his son was away from home. Karol was now alone in the world at age 21. He was even more devastated that once again he had not been with his father when he died: ?I wasn?t there when my mother died; I wasn?t there when my brother died; and I wasn?t there when my father died?.? (Bernstein & Politi, p51).
He had been majoring in drama, and had developed skills as an actor and grew in his love of poetic and theatrical performance, so it was a great surprise to his friends when he suddenly announced his intention to become a priest the year after his father?s death. Because of the Nazi takeover, he entered an illegal, underground seminary to pursue his studies. Like his parents, whose spirituality supported them following their early losses, he appears to have found solace in his religious and social community, supported by mentoring relationships by local priests and deep friendships with peers, many of whom were Jewish and who had to flee during the Holocaust, in the expanding trauma of his place and time. These losses too would mark him forever, perhaps becoming the seeds of compassion and empathy for those who suffer, which would influence his legacy as Pope years later.
The Late Empire
The Late Empire
While people like to talk about the "decline" or the "fall" of Rome, no such thing really happened. Although Rome underwent several shocks in the fourth and fifth centuries, some of them violent with a transfer of the imperiate to non-Romans, Rome really did remain in existence. It's impossible to say when the history of Rome ends and when the medieval ("medieval" means "in the middle") period begins, so I'm going to arbitrarily end this history of Rome with the assumption of the imperiate by foreigners. But the empire really does end, for all practical purposes, with the restructuring of the empire by Diocletian.
Diocletian (284-305) came to the throne after a century of disorganization, internal dissent, economic collapse, and foreign invasions. A tough and practical soldier he had one ambition: to retire from the imperiate alive. And he managed to do it (an exceptional feat). To stem the descent into chaos, he decided that the Empire was too large to be adminstered by a central authority, so he divided it in half. The western half would be ruled by a colleague, Maximian, and the seat of government would be Rome; the eastern half would be ruled by Diocletian, and the seat of government was in Nicomedia. Maximian recognized Diocletian as "Augustus," or the senior ruler of the Roman emperor. Beneath these two were appointed to each two officials, called caesars, not only to help manage the administration, but to assume their respective empires on the death of the emperor. In this way, the succession was always guaranteed and the successors had already spent much of their career adminstering the empire. This would prevent both the possibility of the ambitious seizing of the imperiate by provincial generals and would prevent incompetents from assuming control of the Empire.
This was a brilliant strategy and, with other innovations, stabilized the Empire. Diocletian was the first emperor to manifestly break with Roman tradition. He shifted the seat of power to the east, in Nicomedia in Turkey. He also adopted eastern ideas of monarchy; he no longer called himself princeps or even imperator , but dominus , or "Lord." He took a crown and wore royal clothing; he demanded and got out and out worship by his subjects.
In 305, Diocletian retired to a farm to raise cabbages; he forced Maxmian also to retire. So the imperiate passed without fuss to their two caesars. This brilliant system, so promising in its inception, fell apart immediately as the two emperors began feuding. Within a year, the son of one of the original caesars gained the throne: Constantine (306-337). Like Diocletian, he ruled only half of the Roman Empire, the western half. But in 324, he abandoned the system and ruled over a single, united empire. However, he shifted the seat of government east to his own city in Turkey, Constantinople.
Constantine was like Diocletian in his affection for eastern ways of life and eastern views of monarchy. He took on himself all the trappings of an eastern king, as Diocletian had done, and declared the imperiate to be hereditary. After eight hundred years without a monarch, Rome had finally returned back to monarchy. Constantine, however, is one of the most noted rulers in Rome for he was the first emperor to convert to Christianity. Although he didn't make Christianity a state religion, his conversion provoked a wild proliferation of the faith, particularly in the eastern empire. Constantine, however, never really became a Christian ruler. He retained all the trappings of power including the demand that he be venerated as a god, as Diocletian had done.
Constantine, however, had several problems with his new faith. The first was that there was no established doctrine. In fact, there were as many forms of Christianity as there were communities of Christians. The second was more pressing, for foundational Christianity was manifestly anti-political. Its founder, Jesus of Nazareth, consistently condemned worldly authority and insisted that the Christian life is a non-worldly, individualistic, non-political life. As a result, the foundational Christian texts are not only anti-Roman (for Judaea was part of the Roman Empire during the life of Jesus of Nazareth), but consistently dismissive of human, worldly authority. If Christianity were going to work as a religion in a state ruled by a monarch that demanded worship and absolute authority, it would have to be changed. To this end, Constantine convened a group of Christian bishops at Nicea in 325; there, the basic orthodoxy of Christianity was instantiated in what came to be called the Nicene creed, the basic statement of belief for orthodox Christianity. Constantine accomplished more, however, for the Nicene council also ratified his own power and Christianity would begin the long struggle, lasting to this day, between the anti-political ideas of Jesus of Nazareth and the Christianity that is compromised to allow for human authority and power. (A more thorough discussion of the Nicene Council and the history of Christianity in the late Empire can be found in the module, "Early Christianity")
When Constantine died, he divided the Empire between his three sons who, as you might expect, began fighting one another over complete control of the Empire. His sons all adopted Christianity as well, but the emperor, Julian the Apostate (361-363), opposed the religion and tried to undo it by dismissing all the Christians from the government. He was a little too late and reigned a little too briefly, though, to have any real effect. The government of Rome during the fourth century essentially traces out a history of dynastic squabbles and constant internal fractiousness; it wasn't until the end of the century, in the rule of Theodosius (379-395), that Rome was again united under a single emperor. Theodosius made his mark in history by declaring Christianity the state religion of Rome; he made all pagan religions illegal. The Christian Roman state had entered the stage; however, history was about to dramatically change the character of Rome. In 410, the Visigoths, a Germanic tribe that had migrated into northern Italy under the pressure of migrations of the Huns, captured and sacked Rome. From 451 to 453, Rome was overrun by the Hunnish leader, Attila, and finally, in 455, the Vandals, another Germanic tribe, conquered Rome. Finally, in 476, Odoacer deposed the Roman emperor and made himself emperor. Power had passed from the Romans to the barbarians war-chiefs; the Middle Ages had begun. Rome now passed to two heirs: Europe in the west and, to the east, the Byzantines, who carried on the government structure, the social structure, the art and the thought of classical Rome and Greece.
Friday, November 14, 2008
His Holiness John Paul II ( Short Biography )
Karol Józef Wojtyła, known as John Paul II since his October 1978 election to the papacy, was born in the Polish town of Wadowice, a small city 50 kilometers from Krakow, on May 18, 1920. He was the youngest of three children born to Karol Wojtyła and Emilia Kaczorowska. His mother died in 1929. His eldest brother Edmund, a doctor, died in 1932 and his father, a non-commissioned army officer died in 1941. A sister, Olga, had died before he was born.
He was baptized on June 20, 1920 in the parish church of Wadowice by Fr. Franciszek Zak, made his First Holy Communion at age 9 and was confirmed at 18. Upon graduation from Marcin Wadowita high school in Wadowice, he enrolled in Krakow's Jagiellonian University in 1938 and in a school for drama.
The Nazi occupation forces closed the university in 1939 and young Karol had to work in a quarry (1940-1944) and then in the Solvay chemical factory to earn his living and to avoid being deported to Germany.
In 1942, aware of his call to the priesthood, he began courses in the clandestine seminary of Krakow, run by Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha, archbishop of Krakow. At the same time, Karol Wojtyła was one of the pioneers of the "Rhapsodic Theatre," also clandestine.
After the Second World War, he continued his studies in the major seminary of Krakow, once it had re-opened, and in the faculty of theology of the Jagiellonian University. He was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Sapieha in Krakow on November 1, 1946.
Shortly afterwards, Cardinal Sapieha sent him to Rome where he worked under the guidance of the French Dominican, Garrigou-Lagrange. He finished his doctorate in theology in 1948 with a thesis on the subject of faith in the works of St. John of the Cross (Doctrina de fide apud Sanctum Ioannem a Cruce). At that time, during his vacations, he exercised his pastoral ministry among the Polish immigrants of France, Belgium and Holland.
In 1948 he returned to Poland and was vicar of various parishes in Krakow as well as chaplain to university students. This period lasted until 1951 when he again took up his studies in philosophy and theology. In 1953 he defended a thesis on "evaluation of the possibility of founding a Catholic ethic on the ethical system of Max Scheler" at Lublin Catholic University. Later he became professor of moral theology and social ethics in the major seminary of Krakow and in the Faculty of Theology of Lublin.
On July 4, 1958, he was appointed titular bishop of Ombi and auxiliary of Krakow by Pope Pius XII, and was consecrated September 28, 1958, in Wawel Cathedral, Krakow, by Archbishop Eugeniusz Baziak.
On January 13, 1964, he was appointed archbishop of Krakow by Pope Paul VI, who made him a cardinal June 26, 1967 with the title of S. Cesareo in Palatio of the order of deacons, later elevated pro illa vice to the order of priests.
Besides taking part in Vatican Council II (1962-1965) where he made an important contribution to drafting the Constitution Gaudium et spes, Cardinal Wojtyła participated in all the assemblies of the Synod of Bishops.
The Cardinals elected him Pope at the Conclave of 16 October 1978, and he took the name of John Paul II. On 22 October, the Lord's Day, he solemnly inaugurated his Petrine ministry as the 263rd successor to the Apostle. His pontificate, one of the longest in the history of the Church, lasted nearly 27 years.
Driven by his pastoral solicitude for all Churches and by a sense of openness and charity to the entire human race, John Paul II exercised the Petrine ministry with a tireless missionary spirit, dedicating it all his energy. He made 104 pastoral visits outside Italy and 146 within Italy. As bishop of Rome he visited 317 of the city's 333 parishes.
He had more meetings than any of his predecessors with the People of God and the leaders of Nations. More than 17,600,000 pilgrims participated in the General Audiences held on Wednesdays (more than 1160), not counting other special audiences and religious ceremonies [more than 8 million pilgrims during the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 alone], and the millions of faithful he met during pastoral visits in Italy and throughout the world. We must also remember the numerous government personalities he encountered during 38 official visits, 738 audiences and meetings held with Heads of State, and 246 audiences and meetings with Prime Ministers.
His love for young people brought him to establish the World Youth Days. The 19 WYDs celebrated during his pontificate brought together millions of young people from all over the world. At the same time his care for the family was expressed in the World Meetings of Families, which he initiated in 1994.
John Paul II successfully encouraged dialogue with the Jews and with the representatives of other religions, whom he several times invited to prayer meetings for peace, especially in Assisi.
Under his guidance the Church prepared herself for the third millennium and celebrated the Great Jubilee of the year 2000 in accordance with the instructions given in the Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennio adveniente. The Church then faced the new epoch, receiving his instructions in the Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio ineunte, in which he indicated to the faithful their future path.
With the Year of the Redemption, the Marian Year and the Year of the Eucharist, he promoted the spiritual renewal of the Church.
He gave an extraordinary impetus to Canonizations and Beatifications, focusing on countless examples of holiness as an incentive for the people of our time. He celebrated 147 beatification ceremonies during which he proclaimed 1,338 Blesseds; and 51 canonizations for a total of 482 saints. He made Thérèse of the Child Jesus a Doctor of the Church.
He considerably expanded the College of Cardinals, creating 231 Cardinals (plus one in pectore) in 9 consistories. He also called six full meetings of the College of Cardinals.
He organized 15 Assemblies of the Synod of Bishops - six Ordinary General Assemblies (1980, 1983, 1987, 1990, 1994 and 2001), one Extraordinary General Assembly (1985) and eight Special Assemblies (1980,1991, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998 (2) and 1999).
His most important Documents include 14 Encyclicals, 15 Apostolic Exhortations, 11 Apostolic Constitutions, 45 Apostolic Letters.
He promulgated the Catechism of the Catholic Church in the light of Tradition as authoritatively interpreted by the Second Vatican Council. He also reformed the Eastern and Western Codes of Canon Law, created new Institutions and reorganized the Roman Curia.
As a private Doctor he also published five books of his own: "Crossing the Threshold of Hope" (October 1994), "Gift and Mystery, on the fiftieth anniversary of my ordination as priest" (November 1996), "Roman Triptych" poetic meditations (March 2003), "Arise, Let us Be Going" (May 2004) and "Memory and Identity" (February 2005).
In the light of Christ risen from the dead, on 2 April a.D. 2005, at 9.37 p.m., while Saturday was drawing to a close and the Lord's Day was already beginning, the Octave of Easter and Divine Mercy Sunday, the Church's beloved Pastor, John Paul II, departed this world for the Father.
From that evening until April 8, date of the funeral of the late Pontiff, more than three million pilgrims came to Rome to pay homage to the mortal remains of the Pope. Some of them queued up to 24 hours to enter St. Peter's Basilica.
On April 28, the Holy Father Benedict XVI announced that the normal five-year waiting period before beginning the cause of beatification and canonization would be waived for John Paul II. The cause was officially opened by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, vicar general for the diocese of Rome, on June 28 2005.
The British Invention Of Radar
[1.1] ROBERT WATSON-WATT & RDF
* World War I had introduced electronics to combat in the form of radio, as well as the "radio direction finding (RDF)" systems the British used to locate German ships and submarines at sea. World War I electronics systems were crude, clumsy, and unreliable, but after the war great progress was made in the art.
The evolution of electronics in warfare was accelerated by the parallel evolution of combat aircraft, particularly bombers. Aerial bombing was not much more than a military nuisance during World War I, but after the war bombers became bigger and faster, with heavier bombloads and longer range. Many strategic thinkers began to believe bombers could be the decisive factor in the "next war".
The only means of detecting attacking bombers was with ground spotter networks, sometimes augmented by listening horns. As bombers became faster, such means of detection were obviously inadequate to give timely warning of attacks and permit an effective defense. In 1932, British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, in an address to Parliament, said there was no hope of defense against bombers, saying: "The bomber will always get through." The only way to prevent such attacks, in this view, was to have the capability to retaliate in kind. This prediction seemed to be borne out by British Royal Air Force (RAF) air exercises in July 1934, when at least half the day bomber attacks in the maneuvers managed to reach their targets without being attacked by fighters.
The Nazi aerial bombings of Spanish cities during the Spanish Civil War in 1936 were a shock to the public. As a wider war approached, the raids led European governments to fear that waves of enemy bombers would level their cities with a rain of bombs.
* Not everyone in the British Air Ministry felt that the bomber would always get through. In June 1934, a junior Air Ministry official named A.P. Rowe went through whatever he could find on plans for the air defense of Britain, and was disturbed to learn that although work was going into development of improved aircraft, little other work was being done to consider a broad defensive strategy. Rowe wrote a memo to his boss, Henry Wimperis, explaining the situation and saying that the lack of adequate planning was likely to prove catastrophic.
Wimperis took the memo very seriously, and did the natural and proper bureaucratic thing: he proposed that the Air Ministry form a committee to investigate new technologies for defense against air attacks. Wimperis suggested that the committee be led by Sir Henry Tizard, a prestigious Oxford-trained chemist, rector of the Imperial College of Science & Technology. The "Committee for the Scientific Survey of Air Defense (CSSAD)" was duly formed under Tizard's direction, with Wimperis as a member and Rowe as secretary.
Wimperis also independently investigated other possible new military technologies. The Air Ministry had a standing prize of a thousand pounds to be awarded to anyone who could build a death ray that could kill a sheep at 180 meters (200 yards). The idea seems a bit silly in hindsight, but some British officials were worried that the Germans were working on such weapons, and Britain couldn't afford to be left behind. Some studies were done on intense radio and microwave beams, something along the lines of modern "electromagnetic pulse" weapons.
Wimperis contacted a Scots physicist named Robert Watson-Watt, supervisor of a national radio research laboratory, to see what he thought about death rays. Watson-Watt, a descendant of James Watt, inventor of the first practical steam engine, was a cheery, tubby man with lots of drive and intelligence, though he had an annoying tendency to talk on at length in a one-sided fashion. He had established a reputation for himself in developing radio systems to pin down the location of thunderstorms, which generate radio noise, by triangulation.
After some quick "back of the envelope" studies and conversations with members of his lab, Watson-Watt replied to Wimperis that he thought death rays weren't very practical. The most powerful radio beams that could be generated in those days wouldn't even make an enemy aircrew feel warm. However, Watson-Watt added that radio beams could be bounced off enemy aircraft to detect them, though not destroy them. Wimperis realized that such a concept meshed neatly with the CSSAD's mandate, and ran the idea past the committee's members. They were interested, and in response Watson-Watt fleshed out his ideas in a memo dated 12 February 1935.
The memo outlined the basic physics involved, used simple calculations to show the idea was well within the limits of possibility, and described how such a system could be implemented. Watson-Watt suggested that a network of such "radio echo detection" systems could be built that would have a range of up to 300 kilometers (190 miles). He also cautioned that the scheme he had outlined could determine the distance to an aircraft, but a practical system would also need to determine its "azimuth", or horizontal location, and altitude as well.
The CSSAD was enthusiastic, but they needed a proof-of-concept demonstration before they could pry development funds out of the British Air Ministry. Watson-Watt and his team worked overnight to improvise a radio detection system, using a receiver to pick up the echo of transmissions from a convenient BBC tower off a target. On 26 February 1935, the demonstration system managed to pick up a Handley-Page Heyford bomber being used as a test target. The bomber flew through the beam and the reflected signal was easily visible. The demonstration impressed people in high places, particularly Air Marshal Hugh Dowding, known as "Stuffy" since he was notoriously humorless. On 13 April, the Air Ministry agreed to provide 12,300 pounds, a generous sum at the time, for development of the new radio echo detection system.
The group working on the concept searched for a name, and finally settled on "RDF", which strongly implied "radio direction finding" to the uninitiated and helped ensure security. In 1941, they would rename the scheme "radiolocation".
In fact, there was a wide range of candidate names for the new technology. The US Army's Signal Corps called it "radio position finding (RPF)", while the US Army Air Corps called it "derax". The term "radar", an acronym for "Radio Detection And Ranging", was invented in 1940 by US Navy researchers and wasn't adopted by the British until 1943. However, for the sake of simplicity, the term "radar" will be generally used in the rest of this document. Incidentally, some sources claim the Australians called it "doover", but this appears to be a misunderstanding, "doover" being an old Australian slang term along the lines of the Yank term "thingamajig" that could be applied to almost anything.
* The BBC transmitter used in the proof-of-concept test could only send out a continuous signal. Watson-Watt's scheme actually specified that the transmitter send out a short pulse. Half the time delay between the transmission and reception of the pulse, multiplied by the speed of light (300,000 kilometers per second / 186,000 miles per second) would give the range to the target. The time delay would be very short, but it could be measured using an oscilloscope.
The oscilloscope would be connected to the receiver to display the pulse echo on its "cathode ray tube (CRT)", essentially much like a modern TV picture tube. The oscilloscope's sweep would be triggered when the transmitter sent the pulse. The farther away the target was, the longer the delay would be between transmission and reception of the pulse, and this delay could be measured by the distance of the pulse across the oscilloscope screen. The screen could be directly calibrated with the appropriate distance markings. This sort of radar display became known as an "A-scope"
The idea behind pulsed radar was straightforward, and in fact Watson-Watt was not the first to come up with it. Crude radars had been around for decades. A radar had been demonstrated and patented by a German engineer named Christian Huelsmeyer as far back as 1904.
Although Huelsmeyer's radar generated a periodic output using a spark gap transmitter, it was not a pulsed radar as described above since he had no means of electronically timing the echo. It could simply detect that something was there and ring a bell, though Huelsmeyer was able to use the location of his transmitter, knowledge of the configuration of a target, and a little rough geometry to obtain crude range estimates. The spark gap was used simply because Huelsmeyer had no other reasonable way of obtaining an output of adequate power at the time.
A comparable crude radar, using a continuous-wave oscillator, was invented in 1922 by two US Navy researchers, Albert Hoyt Taylor and Leo C. Young, but they dropped the idea for over a decade. By 1934, Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union, France, and other countries had all demonstrated primitive continuous wave radar systems. There was also some tinkering with "interference detectors" that had a widely separated transmitter and receiver and could sense an aircraft flying through the beam between the two. As with Huelsmeyer's radar, these systems could detect that something was there, but could not give a direct estimate of its range. A continuous wave radar could be used to find range by varying the frequency of the signal, but such "frequency modulation" techniques were still being developed at the time.
Watson-Watt's proof-of-concept demonstration with an improvised continuous wave system was basically just showmanship, and anyone with any real knowledge of such ideas would have laughed at it as trivial. However, the number of people who knew enough to laugh were few in number, and Watson-Watt's audience appears to have been suitably impressed. After all, it did get the basic idea across: radio waves could be used to spot airplanes.
Pulsed radar had to wait until the invention of electronic pulse generation and pulse timing circuitry made it possible. Once those tools were available, development of a pulsed radar system was a fairly obvious next step, and the British weren't the only ones on to the idea. In the early 1930s, Taylor and Young, then at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington DC, also came up with the idea of pulsed radar. Taylor assigned one of his engineers, Robert Page, to implement a demonstration system, and in December 1934, Page's demonstration system detected a small airplane flying up and down the Potomac.
The Americans had actually beaten the British to the first demonstration of pulsed radar by several weeks. However, the British were the first to grasp radar's potential, quickly envisioning a national network of radar stations to provide advance warning of an attack. This gave Britain a step ahead in what would turn into a race for electronic supremacy
[1.2] CHAIN HOME
* Robert Watson-Watt decided to establish a radar development team stationed at an isolated and deserted airfield on a coastal isthmus at Orfordness, in Suffolk, where the work could be conducted without attracting much notice. There were four people on the team, which was led by Arnold F. "Skip" Wilkins, who had done much of the "grunt work" for Watson-Watt since the beginning of the radar investigation. A bright young Welshman named Edward Bowen, with a fresh doctorate from King's College, became Wilkins' right-hand man. Watson-Watt dropped by almost every weekend to keep up with their progress.
After intense brainstorming, late night sessions, and hard work, the team finally came up with a workable radar system in June 1935. The transmitter array consisted of two tall towers with antenna wires strung between them, while the receiver array consisted of two similar arrays arranged in parallel.
By July, the team was able to detect aircraft flying well offshore. They worked to drive down the radar's operating wavelength to avoid interference with commercial radio transmissions, reducing it from an original wavelength of 26 meters (a frequency of 11.5 megahertz / MHz) to 13 meters (23.1 MHz).
Early on, the RDF team had thought that the signal should have a wavelength comparable to the size of the bombers they were trying to detect in order to obtain a resonance effect, but this bought little in practice. Shorter wavelengths would reduce interference and provide greater accuracy, but for the moment it was difficult to generate radio waves with adequate power at short wavelengths. The team also developed schemes to allow determination of azimuth and altitude.
By September 1935, the system had matured to the level where it could be put into operational service. The government authorized the construction of an initial network of five radar stations. The research project expanded, and quickly outgrew the primitive facilities at the Orfordness airfield.
Watson-Watt searched the Suffolk coast for a more capable facility that still had a degree of isolation, and found a coastal estate named "Bawdsey Manor", which the government purchased before the end of the year. Although Bawdsey Manor was a bit run-down, it was still incredibly luxurious in comparison to the primitive accommodations at Orfordness, with such extravangances as a pipe organ and a billiards table. The government hadn't wanted to keep the billiards table, but Eddie Bowen bought it from the previous owners for 25 pounds and it stayed put.
The move to Bawdsey Manor was complete by May 1936. By August 1936 the staff was up to 20 people, including a sharp young physics student from Imperial College named Robert Hanbury Brown. Watson-Watt focused on recruiting scientists for the effort, which encouraged "thinking outside the box", but later on the researchers would be embarrassed to find out that their electronic designs were naive by industry standards. They were, however, a bright and energetic group, and Watson-Watt proved to be a fine and respected technical manager who got the best out of them.
Most of the work was on developing the network of radar stations, which were named "Chain Home (CH)", though in 1940 they would also be assigned the formal designation "Air Ministry Experimental Station (AMES) Type 1". Bowen also worked in a part-time fashion on a pet project, a radar system that could be carried by an aircraft. Work on Chain Home didn't go well through the rest of 1936. After a disappointing demonstration in September that provoked strong criticisms from Tizard, the group redoubled its efforts.
By April 1937, Chain Home was working much more reliably and was detecting aircraft 160 kilometers (100 miles) away. By August 1937, three CH stations were in operation, one at Bawdsey itself, and the other two at Canewdon and Dover, with the network blanketing the western approaches to London.
* The stations could be tuned to four different wavelength bands in the range from 15 meters to 10 meters (20 MHz to 30 MHz). The bandwidth could be set to 500 kilohertz (kHz), 200 kHz, or 20 kHz. A CH station did not look like a modern radar station, instead resembling a "farm" of radio towers. There were four (later reduced to three) metal transmitter towers in a line, and four wooden receiver towers arranged in a rhomboid pattern.
The transmitter towers were about 107 meters (350 feet) tall and spaced about 55 meters (180 feet) apart, with cables strung from one tower to the next to hang a "curtain" of horizontally positioned half-wave transmitter dipoles, transmitting horizontally polarized radio waves. The curtain included a main array of eight horizontal dipole transmitting antennas above a secondary "gapfiller" array of four dipoles. The gapfiller array was required because the main transmitter array had a "hole" in its coverage at low angles. The operator could switch between the two arrays as needed.
The transmitting antenna arrangement not only simplified construction, but it was felt that a horizontally polarized wave would give a better indication on a aircraft, which was a horizontal target when in normal flight. The output stage of the transmitters used special tetrode "valves" (vacuum tubes) built by Metropolitan Vickers of the UK that were water cooled. An air pump system was used to maintain a vacuum in these valves, permitting them to be opened up so the filaments could be replaced when they burned out. A complete backup transmitter unit was provided to ensure that the radar stayed in operation at all times.
The wooden towers for the receiving arrays were shorter, about 76 meters (250 feet) tall. Each wooden receiving tower initially featured three receiving antennas, in the form of two dipoles arranged in a cross configuration, spaced up the tower. Additional crossed dipoles would be fitted later in the war to deal with German jamming.
The transmitter did not send out a nice narrow beam, instead pouring out radio waves over a wide swath like a floodlight. The direction of the echoes returning to the receiving towers could be determined by comparing the relative strengths of the echoes picked up by different crossed dipoles. Comparison of the receiving strength between crossed dipoles on different towers gave the horizontal angle to the target, while comparison of the receiving strength between the crossed dipoles arranged vertically on a tower gave the vertical angle. Only the two top dipoles on each tower were used to determine the horizontal direction, while all three were used to determine the vertical direction. The receiver design owed much to Watson-Watt's old lightning location system.
The pulse width was very long by radar standards, ranging from 6 to 25 microseconds, which meant a corresponding uncertainty in the range of a target. Even a 6 microsecond pulse of radio energy, traveling at 300,000 kilometers per second (186,000 miles per second), is 1.8 kilometers (over a mile) long, leading to at least that much uncertainty in the range of the target. Pulse power was high, with a peak power of 350 kilowatts (kW) initially, then 800 kW, and finally 1 megawatt (MW).
One of the major problems with Chain Home was false or "ghost" echoes from distant, fixed targets. If radar sent out a pulse and the echo didn't come back until after the radar sent out a second pulse. then the echo would seem to have come from the second pulse, indicating a target that was very close when it was really a long ways away. To work around the ghosts, a low pulse repetition frequency (PRF) of 25 Hz was used, allowing echoes to be returned from targets up to 6,000 kilometers away before a second pulse was emitted, ensuring that all the echoes from a pulse would be gone before the next pulse was sent out. This was half the British power grid frequency of 50 Hz, which allowed multiple stations to synchronize their pulse broadcasts, reducing mutual interference. The disadvantage of such a low PRF, ridiculously low in hindsight, was that it reduced the amount of energy the radar was throwing out to detect intruders, and correspondingly reduced the radar's sensitivity.
* Although the concept had its clever bits, Chain Home was a dead-end design. The floodlight scheme wasted transmitter power, since only a small fraction of the transmitter beam, if "beam" was exactly the right word for it, would strike a target, much less be reflected back to the receiving antenna. It was also not very accurate. Range detection was good, to within a kilometer or two, but altitude determination was difficult, and azimuth estimates could be off as much as twelve degrees.
To achieve even that much required not only a lot of engineering work but a lot of calibration, with the radar stations tracking RAF aircraft flying on predetermined courses and operators logging the radar observations. Each CH station required its own calibration, and each was eventually provided with a simple electronic analog computer designed specifically for the task of processing inputs along with the calibration data into something that could be used. The computer was known as a "fruit machine", a British expression for a slot machine; the computer had three rotating switches that were vaguely reminiscent of the three drums on a one-armed bandit. Despite all its limitations, Chain Home worked, and worked effectively, and continued refinements kept it effective for a surprisingly long time.
The RAF took over control of the Chain Home stations from the boffins, and also developed a fighter-control network using radar and observer stations, of which much more is said later. Initial attempts in early 1938 to use the radar system to direct RAF fighters to discreetly intercept airliners didn't go very well, but everyone learned, and CH proved its usefulness during Home Defense exercises in mid-1938. Ground controllers successfully directed interceptors to their targets three-quarters of the time, in both day and night conditions.
CH stations began to be set up overseas as well. Of course that meant that they had to be called "Chain Overseas (CO)" and not "Chain Home", and had some minor differences from CH.
* By this time, Watson-Watt was no longer in charge at Bawdsey Manor. He had been promoted to a high-level technical management job at the Air Ministry in May 1938, and direction of Bawdsey Manor passed on to A.P. Rowe, whose memo of four years earlier had put everything in motion.
Bawdsey staffers were not entirely happy about the change in management. Rowe was not a technical person and was a humorless, no-nonsense type. In considerable compensation, however, he was conscientious with his people and had a high regard for their abilities, though stuffy about rules. He was also a very efficient administrator, and skilled at organizational politics. Finally, he believed in the unchained exchange of ideas, organizing "Sunday Soviets" where staff could say what they liked and trade ideas, even crazy ones, among themselves and with users in the military services.
[1.3] ORIGINS OF AI & ASV
* The inaccuracy of Chain Home led to Eddie Bowen's interest in airborne radar, which he named "Airborne Interception (AI)". CH was able to guide fighter pilots to the general vicinity of intruders, but it was up to the pilots to find and attack them after that. In clear weather the pilots could see intruders easily enough, but the weather in the UK doesn't stay clear for long, and of course the pilots were almost helpless at night. Bowen felt that AI would help them cut through the murk and the dark.
A more experienced engineer might have been reluctant to take on such a job. The electronics for a CH station filled up rooms and soaked up massive amounts of electrical power, and both space and electrical power were at a premium on fighter aircraft. Another problem was that to keep antennas to a size that could be carried on a fighter, the operating wavelength had to be squeezed down to a meter or so. Finally, an AI set was essentially field combat gear, and so it had to be rugged, reliable, and easy to use.
Although Bowen had been forced to set his AI project aside while he hammered out the bugs in Chain Home, he was able to return to it as the stations came on line. His objective was an airborne radar system that would weigh no more than 100 kilograms (220 pounds), consume no more than 500 watts, and use antennas no longer than a meter (3 feet 3 inches).
Initial experiments were conducted in June 1937 with a system operating at 6.7 meters (44.8 MHz), a selection prompted by the availability of a new, very compact and effective, EMI-built television receiver that operated at that wavelength. Bowen modified the receiver for his purposes, installing the kit on a Heyford bomber. The bomber didn't carry a transmitter, instead picking up signals broadcast by a ground station. The receiver system on board the bomber was to pick up the ground transmitter pulses and the echoes and try to make sense of them. Bowen was enthusiastic about the scheme, but it was tricky to get to work, and Watson-Watt told him to give up on it.
However, the idea was basically sensible in itself, if far beyond the technology of the time. Building a "bistatic" radar with separate fixed transmitter and receiver was straightforward, and in fact it was a common configuration for early radars, including Chain Home. Using a fixed transmitter and moving receiver would require capabilities that wouldn't be available in the lifetimes of the Bawdsey researchers.
Bowen went back to the drawing board and managed to put together a full AI set, using miniaturized "acorn" vacuum tubes developed by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), and operating at 1.5 meters (200 MHz). Some sources claim this initial set operated at 1.25 meters (240 MHz), but if so development quickly switched to the longer wavelength.
Bowen was visiting his parents in Wales when the AI set was given its first flight test in a twin-engine Avro Anson utility aircraft on 17 August 1937. The test did not detect any aircraft, but a few ships were detected. This immediately turned the focus of the airborne radar project from AI to airborne ocean surveillance, or what was termed "Air to Surface Vessel (ASV)". Watson-Watt quickly proposed that Bowen's airborne radar be used to observe Royal Navy maneuvers, which began on 6 September 1937. Eddie Bowen was part of the flight crew this time, and the tests were highly successful, with the radar finding warships in weather so foul that other aircraft had been grounded.
[1.4] ROYAL NAVY, BRITISH ARMY, & SOUTH AFRICAN RADAR EFFORTS
* While Bawdsey worked on different radar technologies and the RAF organized the air defense of Britain around Chain Home, the other British armed services were conducting radar development on their own. The division of efforts greatly annoyed Watson-Watt, who wanted to centralize all such research in his own organization.
The Royal Navy had set up their effort at HM Signal School in Portsmouth in 1935, making little progress until a new commandant was assigned to the school in the summer of 1937. Official interest and support increased dramatically, and work on the naval radar, the "Type 79", finally began to converge towards a solution.
Although the Type 79 had originally been designed to operate at a wavelength of 4 meters (75 MHz), development didn't really get rolling until the wavelength was switched to 7.5 meters (40 MHz). Generating signals at this wavelength was less challenging, and it also allowed the Royal Navy researchers to leverage off the same EMI television receiver technology used by Bowen, which they may have learned about through the Royal Navy liaison at Bawdsey Manor.
A prototype version of the Type 79 radar was successfully demonstrated in early 1938. By the end of the year, the Type 79 had been installed on the battleship HMS RODNEY and the cruiser HMS SHEFFIELD. It would be soon fielded on other vessels and be upgraded to the improved "Type 279".
The Type 79 and Type 279 were similar, both using separate transmitting and receiving antennas mounted on their own masts but rotating in synchronization. The antennas were small, resulting in a wide beam, which was adequate for detecting aerial intruders at ranges of up to about 80 kilometers (50 miles), but not so good at targeting naval vessels. It was also not very good at picking up low-flying aircraft.
* The need for more precise targeting led Royal Navy researchers to hastily develop a 1.5 meter (200 MHz) radar, the "Type 286", based on the technology Bowen had developed during his AI work. The initial "Type 286M" used a fixed antenna, meaning the ship had to change direction to point the radar beam. The Type 286M could pick up a surfaced submarine at a distance of no more than a kilometer if the vessel carrying the radar was pointed in the right direction.
In March 1941, a Royal Navy destroyer managed to spot a German submarine at night using the Type 286M and then rammed the submarine, sending it to the bottom. However, that was basically nothing more than a stroke of luck. A "Type 286P" with a steerable antenna would be introduced in mid-1941.
* The Royal Navy was working on a better solution even as the Type 286 was going into service, in the form of a 50 cm (600 MHz) radar for naval gunfire direction. A prototype set was available by the end of 1938, and put through successful sea trials in mid-1939. Designs for a production set for surface fire control, the "Type 284", and for anti-aircraft fire control, the "Type 285", were in place in 1940 and were being delivered to the Royal Navy in 1941.
Both the Type 284 and Type 285 used "Yagi" antennas, essentially a row of dipoles of increasing size mounted on a rod, with the beam generated along the axis of the rod. A modern household broadcast TV antenna is a common example of a type of Yagi antenna. The antennas, which workers also called "fishbones" for their appearance, were arranged at slightly different angles away from the centerline of the radar, with each side driven in an alternating fashion. The returns to each side would be different until the target was on the centerline. This technique, known as "lobe switching", could provide very precise azimuth angles.
Both the Type 284 and Type 285 had horizontal lobe-switching. It is unclear if the Type 285 had vertical lobe-switching, which would have been handy for an air-defense radar.
All radar users learned sooner or later that such a powerful tool was of limited use without the proper procedures in place to make good use of it. Radar was a new thing and the Royal Navy had to learn by doing. At first, the Admiralty imposed strict limits on the use of radar, restricting it to one sweep every five minutes, in order to confound German radio direction finding equipment. Captains soon began to ignore the restrictions since the usefulness of radar outweighed its liabilities, and eventually the restrictions were formally lifted. Resourceful Royal Navy officers began to see the range of things they might accomplish with radar, and began to organize central electronic command posts on their vessels.
The value of radar would be proven on the night of 27 March 1941, when the British battleship VALIANT and the cruisers ORION and AJAX, all equipped with radar, jumped an Italian force consisting of three cruisers and four destroyers off the southern coast of Greece at Cape Matapan. All the Italian warships, except for two of the destroyers, went to the bottom.
* The British Army also set up their own radar lab in October 1936, sited at Bawdsey Manor, and directed by Dr. E.T. Paris and Dr. A.B. Wood. Their initial work was on a "Mobile Radar Unit (MRU)", which was basically a version of Chain Home that could be bundled up and moved. It used much of the same electronics gear, but of course used transportable masts about 20 meters (66 feet) tall, instead of the big towers used by fixed-site CH stations, and operated around of 7 meters (42.9 MHz).
The MRU was picked up by the RAF in 1938, acquiring the formal designation of "AMES Type 9" in 1940. British Army researchers then moved on to the development of "Coastal Defense (CD)" sets to direct coastal artillery, and "Gun Laying (GL)" sets to direct anti-aircraft guns and searchlights.
The CD set was based on Bowen's AI work, operating at 1.5 meters (200 MHz). It was operational by the spring of 1939 and went into production soon after. It used a steerable antenna with lobe switching and had much better accuracy, though only half the range, of Chain Home. The CD set was put into service with air defense sites, as well as coastal defense sites, acquiring the formal designation of "AMES Type 2" in 1940.
It was quickly realized that the CD set could just as easily be used to pick up low-flying intruders that would escape CH. In August 1939, on Watson-Watt's recommendation, the Air Ministry decided to install one at each Chain Home station. In the air defense role, the set was known as "Chain Home Low (CHL)", with those used outside of Britain referred to as "Chain Overseas Low (COL)" or formally "AMES Type 5". It could be put on a tower to perform the functions of both CH and CHL. Early models of the CHL had separate transmit and receive antennas, and an A-scope display.
* The GL effort proved less impressive. About 400 GL Mark I sets were made, followed by about 1,600 GL Mark IIs. They were crude radars, operating at in the range of 5.5 to 3.5 meters (54.6 to 85.7 MHz). They were capable of ranging but not targeting, which still had to be done by eye. The limitations of GL reflected the entire army radar effort. For the first years of the war, the British Army lived up to the stereotype of stodginess that the Air Ministry had transcended.
The GL Mark II did have its fans. When the Soviet Union joined the war against Hitler after the Nazi invasion of the USSR in June 1941, the British would send the Soviets a large quantity of GL Mark IIs. While the Soviets had developed relatively crude "RUS-1" and "RUS-2" fixed-station radar sets and fielded them in small numbers, the GL Mark II was simple, effective to a limit, and far better than anything else the Soviets had. They designated the set the "SON-2", produced a limited number themselves, and were given hundreds of GL.IIs by the British. They would be given improved Western radars later.
* The South Africans also developed radar in parallel with British efforts. Dr. Basil Schonland, Director of the Bernard Price Institute in Johannesburg, learned about British radar from a highly-placed visitor in 1939. By the end of that year, the institute had developed a working experimental prototype. By March 1940, they had an operational coastal-defense set, designated "JB" for "Johannesburg", ready for service.
The JB operated at 3.5 meters (85.7 MHz) with a peak power of 5 kilowatts, and used a steerable dipole array. It was built entirely from locally-manufactured components. Improved versions of the JB would follow South African forces to the Mediterranean.
[1.5] ORIGINS OF IFF
* The deployment of radar as an operational system and not just an experimental toy led the British to confront a problem that acquired the designation "identification friend or foe (IFF)". IFF was just what it said, figuring out who was friend and who was foe, so friends could shoot foes and not shoot other friends.
IFF was a particular problem with aircraft. Picking out a proper target in the sky during a fast-moving dogfight was difficult, and in the First World War all the combatants had developed distinctive national insignia for their aircraft to protect them from friends. Radar greatly compounded the IFF problem, since a target appeared as no more than a featureless blip on a screen. There had to be some way for the radar to perform IFF, and to complicate matters any scheme used should not reveal the aircraft's presence or location to an enemy, or be easily duplicated by an enemy intruder.
Even before the introduction of radar, the RAF had developed a tracking system for directing fighters known as "Pip Squeak", which used direction-finding stations to triangulate the position of a fighter based on a tone emitted by the fighter's radio for 14 seconds out of every minute, unless the pilot was talking over the radio.
The problem with Pip Squeak was that it wasn't easy to integrate with the radar network. It would be preferable to have an IFF on an aircraft that the radar itself could identify. In 1938, Bawdsey researchers had tinkered with a "passive" radar reflector mounted on fighters and tuned to Chain Home frequencies as a means of marking friends. This was supposed to ensure that friendly fighters were brighter to CH than foes, but it was too simplistic an approach. The magnitude of radar reflections depends not only on a large number of environmental factors but on the angle at which the radar beam hits the aircraft, and it proved impossible to consistently determine which aircraft were carrying passive reflectors and which were not. Clearly, a more sophisticated "active" electronic IFF system was needed.
The result was "IFF Mark I", which was the first IFF "transponder". On receiving a radar pulse in the proper wavelength range, it would transmit a response pulse that rose in amplitude, allowing a radar operator to identify it as belonging to a "friend". IFF Mark I went into operation in late 1939, with a thousand sets built. It was triggered by CH radar transmissions. It was, however, difficult to use, since aircrew had to adjust it in flight to get it respond properly, and it didn't respond properly about half the time.
It was quickly followed by "IFF Mark II", which had been development even before the introduction of Mark I. Mark II could respond not only to Chain Home signals, but also to 7 meter (42.9 MHz) signals from the MRU, the 1.5 meter (200 MHz) signals of Chain Home Low and Navy sets, and the 3.5 meter (86.7 MHz) signals of Army sets. Unfortunately, though it worked better than IFF Mark I, Mark II was overly complicated and still required inflight adjustments. IFF was a sticky problem and getting to work right was going to take some effort.
Incidentally, the British designation "IFF" has stuck to the technology to this day, probably because it was hard to think of any more sensible name to call it. This partly compensates for the triumph of Yank terms like "radar" and "sonar" over the British terms "RDF" and "ASDIC".
