Milestones:Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., 1925-1983 and Milestones:One-Way Police Radio Communication, 1928: Difference between pages

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One-Way Police Radio Communication, 1928

Detroit, MI Dedicated May 1987 - IEEE Southeastern Michigan Section

At this site on April 7, 1928 the Detroit Police Department commenced regular one-way radio communication with its patrol cars. Developed by personnel of the department's radio bureau, the system was the product of seven years of experimentation under the direction of police commissioner, William P. Rutledge. Their work proved the practicality of land-mobile radio for police work and led to its adoption throughout the country.

The plaque can be viewed in the Harbormaster Station on Belle Island of Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A.

In the 1920s gangster era, bank robbers and bootleggers made clean getaways time after time, to the great consternation of police. For this was before reliable mobile-radio communications existed, communications that could have quickly dispatched patrol cars to the scene of the crime.

But in 1928, a dedicated Detroit patrolman and an electronics buff devised the first successful one-way radio link between police headquarters and cruisers. Critical news of crimes in progress could now be transmitted from the stationhouse to police cars as they drove.

Electronics was a fledgling science when Detroit Patrolman Kenneth Cox and Robert L. Batts, an engineering student, built a stable radio receiver and antenna system. Their successful one-way radio, coming after years of trial and error, was installed in April 1928. The Detroit Police Department made history as the first to dispatch patrol cars regularly by radio. Many city police departments shortly followed suit with their own systems.

Imagine driving along, listening to music on your car radio. All of a sudden, someone starts reading, on the air, a list of stolen vehicles. That's how the first police radio system in the world operated, and it operated in Detroit.

Between 1921 and 1927, radio buffs Kenneth R. Cox, Walter Vogler and Bernard Fitzgerald, all Detroit police officers, experimented with radio sets they had Installed in the back seat of a Model T Ford police patrol car.

The receivers picked up signals, but not very consistently. Frequently, broadcasts would fade out as the car passed large buildings or under railroad bridges. Also, police had no designated band on which to broadcast, so the system operated like any radio station. The station was appropriately called KOP.

KOP was listed officially as an entertainment station. To meet FRC (Federal Radio Commission, predecessor of the FCC) licensing requirements, police officers broadcast recorded music in between lists of stolen vehicles and descriptions of missing children.

Persistent work by Cox and Robert Batts led to the development of an improved receiver in 1927. A broadcasting station, W8FS, was set up on Belle Isle and regular dispatches began in 1928. (from Detroit Free Press, Thursday, May 7, 1987)

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-{{MilestoneLayout|citation=There are four plaques in order to provide space to list the achievements.
+== One-Way Police Radio Communication, 1928  ==
-BELL LABS – WIRELESS AND SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS, 1925-1983
+[[Image:One-way police radio communications.jpg|thumb]]Detroit, MI Dedicated May 1987 - [[IEEE Southeastern Michigan Section History|IEEE Southeastern Michigan Section]]
-Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. introduced: the first radio astronomical observations (1933), Smith Chart (1939), early mobile phone service (1946), cellular wireless concept (1947), TDX Microwave Radio System (1947), TD Transcontinental Microwave Radio System (1950), Telstar - first active communications satellite (1962), first observation of the cosmic background radiation (1964), first U.S. cellular wireless system (1978), digital cellular technology (1980), and the AR6A SSB-SC Microwave System (1981).
+''At this site on April 7, 1928 the Detroit Police Department commenced regular one-way radio communication with its patrol cars. Developed by personnel of the department's radio bureau, the system was the product of seven years of experimentation under the direction of police commissioner, William P. Rutledge. Their work proved the practicality of land-mobile radio for police work and led to its adoption throughout the country.''
-BELL LABS - DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING AND COMPUTING, 1925-1983
+'''The plaque can be viewed in the Harbormaster Station on Belle Island of Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A.'''
-Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. introduced: the first electronic speech synthesizer (1936), first binary digital computer (1939), first long-distance computing (1940), digitized and synthesized music (1957), digital computer art (1962), text-to-speech synthesis (1962), UNIX operating system (1969), the C and S languages (1972, 1976), first single-chip digital signal processor (1979), single-chip 32-bit microprocessor (1980), 5ESS Digital Switching System (1982), and C++ language (1983).
-BELL LABS - SOLID STATE AND OPTICAL DEVICES, 1925-1983
+In the 1920s gangster era, bank robbers and bootleggers made clean getaways time after time, to the great consternation of police. For this was before reliable mobile-radio communications existed, communications that could have quickly dispatched patrol cars to the scene of the crime.
-Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. introduced: the point-contact and junction transistors (1947, 1948), zone refining (1951), silicon epitaxy (1951), ion implantation (1952), solar cell (1954), oxide masking (1955), laser concept (1958), MOSFET (1959), foil electret microphone (1962), CO2 laser (1964), silicon gate (1966), heterostructure semiconductor laser (1968), charge coupled device (1969), theory of disordered states of matter (1977), heterojunction phototransistor (1980), and VLSI CMOS technology and circuits (1981).
-BELL LABS - COMMUNICATIONS THEORY AND NETWORKS, 1925-1983
+But in 1928, a dedicated Detroit patrolman and an electronics buff devised the first successful one-way radio link between police headquarters and cruisers. Critical news of crimes in progress could now be transmitted from the stationhouse to police cars as they drove.
-Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. introduced: type A facsimile service (1925), first long-distance television transmission (1927), negative feedback amplifier (1927), first stereo sound transmission (1933), Hamming error-correcting codes (1948), information theory (1948), direct distance dialing (1951), TAT-1 transatlantic telephone cable (1956), T1 transmission system (1962), touch-tone dialing (1963), 1ESS electronic switch (1965), wide area telephone 800 service (1965), and first U.S. commercial fiber-optic system (1977).
-[[Image:2012-05 Bell Labs milestone plaques.jpg|thumb|right|200px|]]
+Electronics was a fledgling science when Detroit Patrolman Kenneth Cox and Robert L. Batts, an engineering student, built a stable radio receiver and antenna system. Their successful one-way radio, coming after years of trial and error, was installed in April 1928. The Detroit Police Department made history as the first to dispatch patrol cars regularly by radio. Many city police departments shortly followed suit with their own systems.
-|gps=Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, 600 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974
+Imagine driving along, listening to music on your car radio. All of a sudden, someone starts reading, on the air, a list of stolen vehicles. That's how the first police radio system in the world operated, and it operated in Detroit.
-.681733,-74.401559|plaque=In the entrance hall lobby|secured=The Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs 6 lobby and the Hall of Innovation have security protection. The building lobby is accessible to the public at the milestone dedication ceremony and during business hours according to Alcatel-Lucent building security procedures.|significance=[[Bell Labs|Bell Labs]] transformed the way people communicate at work and home through the invention and development of many technical innovations that were necessary for the modern telecommunication systems and other advanced technologies. From its founding in 1925, Bell Telephone Laboratories made numerous significant contributions to telecommunications and related fields that led to the information age and the digital era. Some of these contributions include: [[Information theory|information theory]], systems engineering, digital signal processing, digital transmission and switching, data networking, cellular systems, (800) service, the [[Transistors|transistor]], solar cell, integrated circuit technology, [[Communications Satellites|communication satellites]], high capacity undersea cable, touch-tone dialing, voice and video compression, and the Unix operating system.
-The following provides a brief summary description of some of the most significant innovations at [[Bell Labs|Bell Labs]] within the 1925-83 time period that are in the milestone citation.
+Between 1921 and 1927, radio buffs Kenneth R. Cox, Walter Vogler and Bernard Fitzgerald, all Detroit police officers, experimented with radio sets they had Installed in the back seat of a Model T Ford police patrol car.
-Information Theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon at Bell Telephone Laboratories to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and communicating data. It is the fundamental underpinnings of modern computer and communications technology.
+The receivers picked up signals, but not very consistently. Frequently, broadcasts would fade out as the car passed large buildings or under railroad bridges. Also, police had no designated band on which to broadcast, so the system operated like any radio station. The station was appropriately called KOP.
-Systems engineering is the interdisciplinary field of engineering that focuses on how complex engineering projects should be designed and managed over the life cycle of the project. It originated in Bell Telephone Laboratories in the 1940s for the development and implementation of complex systems. It is widely used by companies and government organizations. The NASA Apollo Project and the International Space Station are an examples of such projects using systems engineering.
+KOP was listed officially as an entertainment station. To meet FRC (Federal Radio Commission, predecessor of the FCC) licensing requirements, police officers broadcast recorded music in between lists of stolen vehicles and descriptions of missing children.
-The UNIX operating System and C programming language were created at Bell Labs between 1969 and 1972. UNIX made large-scale networking of diverse computing systems - and the Internet - practical. UNIX and its spin-offs are the operating system of most large computers, Internet servers, and smart phones. The C language brought an unprecedented combination of efficiency and expressiveness to programming. C and its descendants are the most widely used programming languages in the world.
+Persistent work by Cox and Robert Batts led to the development of an improved receiver in 1927. A broadcasting station, W8FS, was set up on Belle Isle and regular dispatches began in 1928. (from Detroit Free Press, Thursday, May 7, 1987)<br>
-The [[Transistors|Transistor]] was invented in 1947 as a replacement for bulky and inefficient vacuum tubes and mechanical relays. The transistor revolutionized the entire electronics world. The transistor sparked a new era of modern technical accomplishments from manned space flight and computers to portable radios and stereos. As embodied in integrated circuits, it is the basic building block of modern electronics and is manufactured by the multi- billions every year.
+== Map ==
-The first practical Solar cell was developed in Bell Labs in 1954. It converts the sun’s energy into electricity. It was first used on a large scale for satellites and is now an important factor in the sustainable creation of electricity.
-Cellular systems were first proposed in 1947 Bell Labs publications. The primary innovation was the development of a network of small overlapping cell sites supported by a call switching infrastructure that tracks users as they moved through a network and pass their call from one site to another without dropping the connection. Bell Labs installed the first commercial cellular network in Chicago in the 1970s. Today, it is the basis of a rapidly growing cellular and mobile smart phone industry.
-The first high capacity transatlantic telephone cable, which was based on innovations from Bell Labs, was deployed in 1956.
-Bell Labs was the pioneer in communications satellites. In 1962 it built and successfully launched the first orbiting active communications satellite (Telstar I), which transmitted the first live television across the Atlantic.
-Digital transmission and electronic switching; In 1962, Bell Labs developed the first digitally multiplexed transmission of voice signals. This innovation not only created a more economical, robust and flexible network design for voice traffic, but also laid the groundwork for today's advanced network services such as 911, 800-numbers, call-waiting and caller-ID. In addition, digital networking was the foundation for the convergence of computing and communications.
-LASER - the invention of the laser, which stands for “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation,” originated in 1958 with the publication of a scientific paper by Bell Labs researchers. Lasers launched a new scientific field and opened the door to a multi-billion-dollar industry that includes applications in medicine, communications, and consumer electronics.
-Bell Labs built the first single-chip digital signal processor in 1979. The DSP is the engine of today's multimedia revolution. DSP technology is in multimedia PCs and in the modems that connect computers to the Internet. It's in wireless phones, answering machines, and voice-mail; it's in video games talking toys, DVD players and digital cameras.|features=|references=|support=}}
-== Map ==
+{{#display_map:42.335699, -83.043004~ ~ ~ ~ ~1300 Beaubien, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A.|height=250|zoom=10|static=yes|center=42.335699, -83.043004}}
-{{#display_map:40.684376, -74.401628~ ~ ~ ~ ~Alcatel Lucent, 600 Mountain Ave., Murray Hill, New Jersey, U.S.A.|height=250|zoom=10|static=yes|center=40.684376, -74.401628}}
+[[Category:News|Police]] [[Category:Communications|Police]] [[Category:Radio communication|Police]] [[Category:Radio broadcasting|Police]]