Possible Milestones for IEEE Long Island Section

HERE ARE SOME POTENTIAL MILESTONES FOR LONG ISLAND:  FEEL FREE TO ADD AND/OR ANNOTATE

1901 Tesla Wardenclyffe Lab (Shoreham)

Wardenclyffe or the Tesla Tower (-1901–1917) in Shoreham was intended to be a wireless telecommunications tower. It was designed by Nikola Tesla for commercial trans-Atlantic wireless telephony, broadcasting and the demonstration of the transmission of power without wires. It never achieved its primary goal, the wireless transmission of power, and was abandoned when J.P. Morgan withdrew financial support. Architect Stanford White of the famous McKim, Mead and White architectural firm designed the 94-ft by 94-ft brick building.

Tesla envisioned the tower as the first step in the achievement of a “World System” which with the perfection of wireless would demonstrate the transmission of power without wires as well as:
1. Permit instant communication, “through television and telephone.”
2. Interconnect telegraph exchanges all over the world.
3. Establish secret and non-interferable government telegraph services.
4. Provide universal distribution of music and news by telegraph, telephone and the press.
5. Interconnect stock tickers throughout the world.
6. Remotely control the movement of ships and track their position.
7. Distribute photos, drawings and records.

The Tesla Wardenclyffe Project (TWP) is an organization whose objective is to preserve and restore the remains of the laboratory as a museum and science center and to have the 16-acre site listed in the National Register of Historic places. The TWP is working with the Long Island group, Friends of Science East, to achieve their objective.

Recognizing and commemorating the Wardenclyffe site as a milestone event by the IEEE would certainly add to the credibility of the TWP and strengthen their advocacy for the preservation and proposed reutilization of the site.

1929 First blind flight by Doolittle at Mitchell Field (Garden City)

During the 1920s there was slow but steady progress in the development of cockpit instruments to assist pilots flying during conditions of low visibility. The instruments available were mechanical and while they could provide altitude, attitude, direction and air speed information, they could not provide position, which is crucial during landing. Position information awaited a radio guidance system whose development began in 1926 by the Bureau of Standards.

The first blind flight occurred on September 24, 1929 when U.S. Army Air Force pilot Lt. James Doolittle, who had a Doctorate in Aeronautics from MIT, working with the Guggenheim Foundation’s Full Flight Laboratory at Mitchell Field, took off and landed in heavy fog after flying a 15 mile course without ever seeing the ground. Crucial to the success of the flight, in addition to the newly developed Kollsman altimeter and the Sperry directional gyro, was the homing and range beacon low frequency receiver. The receiver was built by Radio frequency Laboratories probably for the Bureau of Standards and loaned to the Full Flight Laboratory at Mitchel Field. The homing range antenna was installed on the west side of the field and the fan type marker beacon along the leg of the homing range on the east side.

The receiver output was a pair of vibrating reeds. If the pilot was to the right of the marker beacon’s fan type antenna beam pattern, the left reed vibrated more vigorously. If on the center of the beam, both reeds vibrated with equal deflections. Doolittle, in his autobiography, states that the Kollsman window altimeter, a new design developed for the Full Flight Laboratory, “was synchronized by radio.”

The Daniel Guggenheim Foundation provided funding for the Full Flight Laboratory two years beginning in 1928. The Long Island home and estate of the Guggenheims was in Sands Point and is now a part of the Nassau County Parks, Recreation and Museum Department.

The Cradle of Aviation Museum has a display commemorating the Doolittle Blind Flight. It features a replica of the cockpit instrument panel but without the vibrating reed instrument display. The museum has indicated that it would be interested in displaying an IEEE plaque commemorating the flight.

1941-1996 Sperry Gyroscope Company (Lake Success)

The company was located in Lake Success from 1943 for more than 50 years. It originally occupied 147 acres and extended east from Lakeville Road to New Hyde Park Road and south from Marcus Avenue to Union Turnpike in two buildings.  During WWII it was the largest non-aircraft engineering company on Long Island occupying two buildings with 1.4 million square feet and 22,000 employees.  It can be considered as a milestone candidate not because of any single event or technology innovation but because of the unusual diversity in its applications of electronics and electrical engineering to a wide range of military and civilian products for aircraft, ships, submarines and information systems.

The company was founded in 1910 by Elmer Ambrose Sperry to manufacture marine navigation and ship stabilizer equipment based chiefly on his invention of the gyroscope. By the end of World War I it had diversified into aviation with the development of navigation instruments and remote aerial torpedoes (the first guided missiles). In 1933, it became a holding company, the Sperry Corporation, which included the original Sperry Gyroscope Company, Ford Instrument Company and Intercontinental Aviation among others.

By the beginning of World War II Sperry had become a highly specialized technology company and a major War Department contractor manufacturing a wide array of military products such as computer controlled bombsights, bomber and warship gun turrets, anti-aircraft and searchlight gun directors and airborne radar systems. In the five years from 1938 to 1943, the corporation’s revenue jumped from $18 million to $470 million. Products were classified in eight categories: Radio and Radar, Searchlights, Ship’s Navigational Equipment, Hydraulic Gear, Air Armament Equipment, Army Ordnance Equipment, Air Navigational Equipment and Naval Ordnance Equipment. By the end of the war these same categories included civilian as well as military products. In 1973 the Sperry Corporation merged with Remington Rand to become Sperry Rand, a multi-divisional global organization with $3.2 billion in sales and more than 88,000 employees with 71 plants and associated companies in 33 countries.

Ground was broken in the summer of 1941 for the Sperry Gyroscope Company plant in Lake Success to ensure its ability to meet the ever-increasing number of defense orders they were receiving. By 1943, the plant was in operation with 10,000 employees (60% of them women ) including ________ engineers. The Lake Success plant was the headquarters of the Sperry Corporation and the largest by far of its 15 major plants.

Soon after WWII, the Surface Armament Division at Lake Success developed the target acquisition and guidance radar for the TERRIER and TALOS missile's fire control systems.  It also pioneered in underwater sonar surveillance and fire control systems.  The Systems Management Division developed the gyroscope based inertial guidance systems for the Polaris and Poseidon ICBM nuclear submarines and the instrument and control systems for the Trieste bathyscapth and the NR-1 nuclear research submarine.   

For several years after 1946 United Nations headquarters was located in the company’s west building. Today only the west building remains. Although recently redeveloped and refurbished primarily as a bioscience research rental park, it retains its original architectural features and is easily recognized. The lobby still contains the remnants of an interactive flat screen display showing the evolution of the building from its construction to its present use.  The property is managed by Winthrop Management .

1955 American Bosch Arma Corporation’s B-52 fire-control system for the B-52 and/or the invention of the PROM (Garden City)

Introduction:
The American Bosch Arma Corporation was formed in 1954 and the Arma Division moved into its new facility at Roosevelt Field in Garden City from the various hangers it had previously occupied. During the time it was at Roosevelt Field, Arma developed the advanced MD9 Fire Control System for the B-52 Bomber and Wen Tsing Chow invented the Programmable Read Only Memory (PROM), the essential chip for booting a computer. Arma’s location at Roosevelt Field is not known.

MD9 Fire Control System:
During World War II a fire control system for bombers was initially developed for the B-29 back-up bomber, the B-32, by the Sperry Gyroscope Company. The final version for the B-29 was produced by the General Electric Company. These systems utilized optical sighting methods and electro-mechanical analog computers for the remote control of gun turrets by a single gunner who had to manually enter target parameters. The Arma MD9 system for the B-52 established a new standard of performance for bombers defense systems by incorporating a closed loop TV system combined with radar to search for, acquire and track airborne targets.

Programmable Read Only Chip:
The PROM was invented in 1956 by Wen Tsing Chow while working for Arma in Roosevelt Field. The idea for the PROM was conceived as a result of a request by United States Air Force for a more flexible and secure method for the storing of targeting information in the Atlas ICBM’s airborne computer. Storing data was accomplished by “burning” the “whiskers” of diodes with a current overload. Arma engineers also developed the first PROM programming machines.