Oral-History:Fred Heath

About Fred J. Heath

Heath received his BS in electrical engineering from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, 1938. His graduate work at MIT, specializing in microwaves, was interrupted by the outbreak of war, and he returned to Canada in June 1940, to work for the National Research Council (NRC) in Ottawa. His war-work involved transferring British radar technology to Canadian research and production, and also some collaborative work with the Rad Lab in America. In particular, he helped transfer British technology for the air-to-surface vessel (ASV) radar, and for gunlaying equipment similar to the SCR-584. His Canadian colleagues sent with him to the Rad Lab included Bill Wilson and John Ferguson. After the war he went to work for Canadian General Electric, first in FM radio broadcast equipment, then in radar and sonar.

About the Interview

FRED J. HEATH: An Interview Conducted by John Bryant, IEEE History Center, 12 June 1991

Interview # 078 for the IEEE History Center, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.

Copyright Statement

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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

Fred J. Heath, an oral history conducted in 1991 by John Bryant, IEEE History Center, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.

Interview

INTERVIEWEE: Fred J. Heath

INTERVIEWER: John Bryant

PLACE: Boston, Massachusetts

DATE: 12 June 1991

Family, Education and Start of War

Bryant:

This is John Bryant of the University of Michigan, representing the IEEE Center for History and the IEEE History Committee on an Oral History Project on MIT Radiation Laboratory. I'm talking with Fred J. Heath of Toronto, Canada. Fred, maybe you'd describe briefly some background — your father and why you chose to be an electrical engineer.

Heath:

Well, my father was a druggist in Edmonton, Alberta. I can remember as a child my father saying, "Well, you know, if you're going to be an electrical engineer — " you should do this or that. So it always seemed that I was destined to get into electrical engineering. I was very interested in amateur radio, and I got my license when I was in high school. I used to have problems in the spring because just when exam time was coming up, the DX was good and... [Chuckling] I used to have an awful time trying to concentrate on my school.

I got my degree in electrical engineering with distinction and a first class general standing from the University of Alberta in Edmonton in 1938. And I got a scholarship to come to MIT as a graduate student and hopefully to get the doctorate degree. But of course the war started in the fall of '39, and I thought, Well, maybe I'll just work on a master's degree. As it turned out, I was doing work on waveguides and microwave horn antennas under Barrow, when Dr. Fred Sanders from the National Research Council (NRC) in Ottawa came down looking for recruits to go to Ottawa. The war wasn't going very well at that time, and I felt that it was even more important to get involved with the war than to complete the master's degree. I did some work on my master's thesis, but by the time the war was over; it was too late to finish it up. I went up to Ottawa in June of 1940 and started working on antennas there. In the fall, I became involved with installing a British radar set in a PBY aircraft at Anacostia Air Base in Washington.

Naval Research Lab and England

Bryant:

That was an air-to-surface vessel radar? An ASV?

Heath:

It was an ASV, yes. Dr. Bowen had asked for somebody to help him with that, and so I'd gone down, and we demonstrated it to the Naval Research Lab people at that time. Then on the first of January, I was one of the group of six who came down to help get the MIT Rad Lab started with the benefit of our really very meager experience in radar. [Chuckling]

Bryant:

And what was the background of your five Canadian colleagues?

Heath:

Well, Bill Wilson, who was the senior of the group, had had experience in radio transmitter design, and he was also acting as a consultant on mobile radio for the RCMP. John Ferguson, who is here today, had graduated in physics and later was involved with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited at Chalk River, where he did work on the particle accelerator, the Van de Graaff accelerator, I believe. Anyway, he came down, and at first he was working on microwave receivers. Bill Wilson designed a pulser, and I was working on the antennas, in January and February of 1941, I guess it was. And then a little later on we got involved in building the first airborne set, which went in a plane that had been modified with a plywood nose by the National Research Council of Canada.

Bryant:

I think it was the Royal Canadian Air Force Boeing...

Heath:

Yes. Boeing's 247D, I think it was; one of the first all-metal passenger aircraft. One of the things that we were worried about was the large ground return we were getting. I remember we stuffed steel wool all around the bottom of this thing to prevent the radiation from going downwards.

Bryant:

You had a parabolic antenna?

Heath:

Yes, the standard. What became the standard parabolic antenna in radar.

Bryant:

With a transmit-receive selector, using transmitter and receiver on the same antenna?

Heath:

Both on the same antenna, yes. We had a TR box which had been designed here at the Radiation Lab, and it was one of these Lawson coaxial lines that fed the antenna from the transmitter, which was back in the passenger compartment.

There was also a B18, I guess it was, or B17 which had a 60-cycle generator and 60-cycle equipment on it. It had a plastic nose. So we alternated using each other as targets to see what our minimum range was, and we were able to get down to about 250 yards or something of that order.

Bryant:

You had a reasonably narrow pulse, then?

Heath:

Well, it was a 1-microsecond pulse.

Bryant:

And fairly sharp?

Heath:

Very sharp. We put in an inductance in the output circuit of the pulser to pull the pulse down cleanly. We put a damping diode on that to prevent it ringing.

Then about the first of June, we decided that we'd gone far enough, that this set should be taken over to England to demonstrate what we had been able to do here. So the equipment was packed up, and I took it up to Montreal, and then we flew over to England with it. In the meantime, Dr. Dale Corson flew over, I guess, on another flight — I know he joined me over there. We set the equipment up in the lab at Worth Matravers, which is near Swanage. We found that [the British] had a little better first stage for their IF amplifier, and we had time to build that extra stage on, to improve the performance of our set before we reinstalled it in the aircraft, which had come across on the deck of a ship and had to be reassembled — get the wings back on it, etc. — after it got there. Then we had flight trials out of Christchurch airport, I believe it was. We demonstrated it to various people from the Royal Air Force and research people, of course.

We came back in September of '41, and we were getting ready to make an installation of the equipment that was being built to this design by Western Electric. It was to go in a British Beau fighter. A Beau fighter had been brought over, so we could make the installation. That was where we stood when the Pearl Harbor attack occurred, and of course everything changed. That project was dropped, and I was recalled to Ottawa.

After that I went to work for — was on loan to — the Royal Canadian Air Force, where I became the resident engineer at Research Enterprises in Toronto, where the Canadian government was manufacturing radar equipment basically to the British design: initially, the ASV equipment and also gun laying equipment somewhat similar in performance to I think it was — the 584.

Bryant:

SCR-584?

Heath:

Yes, but this was equipment that used two separate antennas, one for transmitting and one for receiving. They had operators who maintained the direction: one operator for vertical and the other for horizontal direction. It gave, I would imagine, about the same sort of performance as they had with the 584. This was the GL3-C I think they called it. And they said that without radar it took about 2,000 shells to bring an enemy plane down; with radar they could do it with about eight or ten. [Chuckling] They built about 660, I think, of those GL3-Cs and shipped them over to Britain and, I guess, to the continent.

Bryant:

Yes. I guess you've already answered the next question: How and under what circumstances were you first made aware of the then secret subject of radar? You mentioned being interviewed by Sanders of NRC.

Heath:

In Ottawa. Well, Sanders didn’t say exactly what it was, of course, when I first agreed to go up there. He just said it was a project involving the war effort and it would help to combat the enemy.

Radiation Laboratory

Bryant:

How did you come to work at Radiation Laboratory? Who recruited you? Was that a decision between the governments?

Heath:

Well, yes. Actually there was a letter — I think you sent it to me — a copy of a letter from Vannevar Bush to the National Research Council asking for our help.

Bryant:

Okay. I remember. Yes.

Heath:

There were three of us engineers, and then there were three technicians — technologists — who came down. One of them, Roy Adams, has since passed away. As far as I know, the others are still alive. But Bill Wilson is getting on and apparently is beginning to show signs of his age. He's about 80 or 81 now, I think.

Bryant:

What was your job title at Radiation Lab? Do you recall?

Heath:

I don't recall particularly. We put in a rotator for the antenna to do these antenna measurements. I guess I worked under Ray Herb, but I don't recall what title I was given at the time.

Pulsers

Bryant:

Was there some distinction between ground and airborne systems.

Heath:

There wasn't really a distinction at that time. What we were trying to determine initially was whether a parabolic was a suitable antenna for the job, for airborne use. In the subsystems, we initially had pulsers that had been made by Westinghouse. We weren't very happy with the pulse shape that we got with them.

Bryant:

Were these the compact pulsers that we know?

Heath:

No, these were operated from 60-cycle power. And Bill Wilson designed this one with what we called the bootstrap circuit where the modulator — the output — was a pair of 304-TLs.

Bryant:

So this was a hard-tube modulator with a pulse transformer?

Heath:

A hard-tube modulator, but there was no pulse transformer. It was just a capacitive coupling. They used 10,000 volts the plate.

Bryant:

I was just curious to know how far industry had gotten at that point.

Heath:

As I say, I particularly remember the pulser because we developed this bootstrap circuit where there was a little tube that would — I've forgotten now what it was — that would break down and produce a pulse. And then this was applied to the grid of three 807s in parallel, which then pulsed the grids of the 304-TLs. Then, as I mentioned earlier, we put the little inductor in the output to haul down the tail-end of the pulse.

Bryant:

Miniaturizing this pulser to go into an airplane must have been a challenge.

Heath:

Well, it was all in a box that was, I would say, maybe 18 inches long — or maybe 2 feet long — at most, and about, oh, I'd say, 10 inches square. It was operating from 1,000-cycle power, using the British type S alternators. They ran at engine speed — at normal engine speed — so they were producing 1,000 to 1,500 cycles power.

General Electric and Bell Labs

Bryant:

Do you recall the antenna? Who made the parabolic antenna and the drivers?

Heath:

I think the antenna was made by General Electric, but I'm not absolutely sure about that. I believe the mechanical drive for the antenna was a hydraulic motor. I recall seeing a very compact hydraulic motor.

Bryant:

I think what I read in Guerlac's book that it was Sperry Gyroscope.

Heath:

That may have been. I remember going to GE at one point to look at what they were proposing. Now, whether that actually got in the plane or not, I'm not sure.

Bryant:

So you did visit at least one of these industrial concerns that was trying to develop component parts or subsystems?

Heath:

Yes.

Bryant:

Did you ever have occasion to go to Bell Labs?

Heath:

No, not on Lab business. I had a friend, Vince Rideout, who was a classmate of mine at the University of Alberta who was working for Bell Labs at the time, but not in connection with the radar.

MIT: Blind Landing Project

Bryant:

You knew Frank Lewis at the Rad Lab?

Heath:

Yes, I had known Frank when we were both graduate students at MIT. He was over in England when I was there, if I remember correctly.

Bryant:

He has mentioned that he saw you down at Christchurch at the flight tests of the AI radar.

Heath:

Yes, that's true.

Bryant:

When you were at MIT as a student, were you aware of the blind landing project that had been going on there for several years?

Heath:

Yes. In fact as a graduate student I was involved in an open-house that we had, where we were demonstrating the principle involved. I can remember being in the lecture hall where we had sort of a toy airplane with a detector on it and then a big meter indicating the level of signal that we were getting. I was trying to follow the lower edge of the beam as a pilot would as he went down for a landing. The other thing they did was to show that by putting a dielectric in a piece of pipe that was operating at below cut-off — it was smaller than the cut-off frequency — it had a plug in it, and out came a signal. [Chuckling]

Bryant:

You were demonstrating this to the public?

Heath:

Yes, right.

Bryant:

What year?

Heath:

That would be in, I would say, the spring of 1940.

Bryant:

That was about the time that Frank Lewis had finished his master's and went down and worked for Alfred Loomis at Loomis's lab in Tuxedo, New York.

Heath:

Yes, it was about that time.

E.G. Bowen

Bryant:

It wasn't long after that that you went back to Canada?

Heath:

Yes, it was in June of that year, of 1940, that I went back to Ottawa and was at the National Research Council.

Bryant:

When did you first meet E.G. Bowen?

Heath:

It was in Ottawa. He came over with the magnetron although I didn't see it at that time. But he also had this ASV equipment that was working at 1-1/2-meter wavelength. We had it in Ottawa for about three days while the people that were going to start manufacturing it were making measurements on it and making notes about it. Then we packed it up and put it in some strong boxes, the sort of thing that they use to transfer bullion in. I can remember being on the train with it. There was an armed guard in the baggage car, and I was there with him while we took it down to the Naval Research Lab.

Bryant:

At Anacostia?

Heath:

At Anacostia. It was interesting because they said I was, I think, the second non-citizen to be allowed to enter the lab. The other had been an Italian who was interested in measuring the effect of gravity at different parts of the world. [Chuckling] Anyway, we set it up. When we were there, we were able to pick up some of the signals from the British Chain stations that were operating at about 13 MHz.

Bryant:

Across the Atlantic?

Heath:

The signals were coming across the Atlantic. We could pick them up in Washington. Bowen, of course, was able to tell us what frequency they were on. And there they were. [Chuckling]

Bryant:

Did you see much of Bowen at Radiation Lab when you were there?

Heath:

Not a great deal. He was traveling around quite a bit, of course, trying to get manufacturing of these other radars set up. And to get the cable that they wanted, the polyethylene insulated cable, for the...

Bryant:

Oh, that's right. They wanted American manufacturers of the polyethylene material.

Heath:

Yes. And I know he was frustrated over the difficulties he was having to get the stuff.

Bryant:

I guess not too many people realize the scope of what the Tizard Mission conspired to do.

Heath:

They covered a tremendous range.

Bryant:

A lot more than just microwave radar.

Heath:

Oh, yes.

Bryant:

The only way to get manufacturers for existing...

Heath:

Existing equipment.

Bryant:

Especially the ASV and IFF equipment.

Bill Wilson

Heath:

Well, yes, this was one of the... In fact, one of the things that happened was — maybe I shouldn't talk about that... [Chuckling]

Bryant:

No, I think we should — Well, don't worry. There'll be a transcription. We're especially interested in people. People make it happen.

Heath:

Yes, I know. Well, this fellow, Bill Wilson, the senior of our group, who went back to Ottawa after I left, with, I guess, enough equipment to build a prototype of radar of the microwave type. Then he was sent to Toronto to become the resident inspector for the radar that they were producing on behalf of the Air Force. And the trouble was that he was so enthusiastic about the microwave radar that he was going around telling people that the lower-frequency stuff was just no good. They shouldn't be bothered working on it. Of course he was overlooking the fact that at that time there were really no airplanes that could carry the microwave. [Chuckling] Anyway, he got a number of people's backs up. Eventually somebody came along and looked around his desk and found that he'd left the schematic diagram of the pulser he'd designed when he was down here in his desk. And of course it was marked, you know...

Bryant:

"Secret."

Heath:

"SECRET! NOT TO BE REMOVED FROM THE RADIATION LAB" and so on. So they nailed him on that. So when I got back to Ottawa after getting married in December of '41, I heard about him having been expelled from REL. I guess it was a little later in January. Anyway, they wanted me to go down and take his place. But of course he was warning me how dangerous it might be for me to be there because these people were so hard to get along with. [Chuckling] Anyway, I went down in great trepidation and said, "Well, I want to be able to come back to NRC in Ottawa if I don't get along with them in Toronto." But when I got there, I found that they really were not that hard to get along with. It was just that Bill was pushing some things a little too hard, I'm afraid. Anyway, I got along well with them. I was there for the rest of the war.

Research at Canadian NRC

Bryant:

That organization not only did manufacturing, but they did a lot of contracting for production.

Heath:

Yes, they did. They subcontracted all of the scopes, for instance, for the ASV equipment. It was contracted out. But they made the big ground-control radar, which was the big, mattress-like antennas, working on about 170 MHz or so. Then later they developed some portable equipment that was used in Africa. They also made optical glass.

Bryant:

One of the things they were first set up for was to manufacture optical glass.

Heath:

Yes, and cathode ray tubes for radar displays: the big 12- or 14-inch ones, as well as the 6-inch ones, I think. There was also a cathode-ray direction-finder that was being made in Canada. It had been developed at the National Research Council, and they used an Adcock array antenna and carefully matched channels so that they could determine instantly the direction from which a radio signal was coming. With two or three of these stations, if they could pick up a submarine was transmitting, for instance, they could locate it within a few miles, I suppose, and send aircraft out looking for it. [Chuckling]

Operation of Rad Lab

Bryant:

I think we know the technical history of the MIT Rad Lab fairly well. I believe we're missing the personal and the sociological side. We know theoretically what the organization was, but we'd be interested to know exactly how it operated. [Chuckling]

Heath:

One of the things that happened at the antenna group was they came to us one day and said that they wanted us to stay away from that area for a while because they were going do some other tests. And that was fine. I talked to Bill Wilson, and he'd developed this new pulser. We were planning to remodel the pulsers that we'd got from Westinghouse. So I said, "Well, since we can't work on our antennas here for the next few days, why don't we modify this pulser?" And he said, "Fine. Let's go ahead." So I went ahead, and I took a pair of side-cutters, and I was busy taking the parts out of the pulser when somebody came along and said, "We wanted to use that pulser." [Laughter] So I said, "Well, I've got so far now with it, it's probably just as quick to finish taking the parts out as it would be to try and put it back the way it was." And they said, "Well, we're really anxious to get on with these tests." So I worked all night, and by the next afternoon I had the pulser going.

Bryant:

Back to its original design?

Heath:

The new design.

Bryant:

And what was the result?

Heath:

Everybody was happy, [Chuckling] and it worked. An indirect result was that when we started working on airborne equipment, it was fairly small, of course, and really you couldn't have more than one or two people work at it at a time. So I said, "Well, why don't I work at night?" So for the next three or four weeks, I'd come in about five o'clock in the afternoon and talk about what had happened during the day. We'd have dinner together, and then I would work through the night, doing things that had to be done to get the thing ready. In that way we were working around the clock on that equipment.

Bryant:

Two long shifts. [Chuckling]

Heath:

I'm not sure exactly when we first got it in the air, but it was probably toward the end of March or early April 1941, I would think.

Bryant:

Have you seen the plaque, which was just put up at MIT about the Radiation Lab?

Heath:

Yes. I saw that.

Bryant:

A statement in there says that it was the first radar small enough to fit in an aircraft.

Heath:

Yes, well.... I guess it came about the same time as the radar that was built in England. They demonstrated to us what I guess was a prototype much like ours was.

Bryant:

The plaque is being changed and that statement will be taken out. Actually it would have been in poor taste even if it were literally true. [Laughter] I was talking with Denis Robinson yesterday. He said that the people at Worth Matravers really did have microwave radar installed in an airplane before 1940 was over. So the first was clearly theirs.

Heath:

Right. [Chuckling] But I had a flight in a plane that was equipped that way. It was a Blenheim bomber, I think they called it. It might have been a Bolingbroke bomber. I'm not sure now. Anyway, it was one of the British planes, and it used a conical scan.

Bryant:

Back to MIT Radiation Lab. You were put on a payroll there. Was this a very formal affair?

Heath:

Not very. The point was that everybody who came to the Lab, I think, was probably paid whatever they'd been getting where they came from. Plus a supplementary pay that was to cover their higher cost of living being away from home. So those of us that had worked for the National Research Council and were on loan here were given that same increment.

Bryant:

You stayed an employee of National Research Council?

Heath:

I was an employee of the National Research Council on loan to the Radiation Lab, but they also put us on the payroll to provide this supplementary income.

Bryant:

Did they find housing for you when you came here?

Heath:

No. There were three or four of us. I don't remember really how we acquired the place where we were staying. There were three or four of us sharing an apartment. I don't think it was found by the Lab although it could have been. At this point I don't remember.

Information and Secrecy

Bryant:

The civilian atmosphere was still very relaxed and the people totally unaware of the very tense and goal-oriented and pushed schedule that you were putting up with?

Heath:

Well, one of the things, of course, that I was horrified at in a sense was that every time we went out to dinner at any of the restaurants, these people, of course, were talking about klystrons and magnetrons and shoptalk. And, you know, how ridiculous it is to be allowing these people to talk this way when it's all supposed to be so secret. Of course they called it the Radiation Lab to disguise the fact that it was radar that they were involved in rather than conventional radiation.

Bryant:

Right. There were Monday night meetings — technical meetings. Did you attend these?

Heath:

I don't recall the particular times we had them. I know there were lectures on waveguide theory and microwave theory and so on. I'm trying to remember who it was that gave the lectures, but I remember that we did attend.

Bryant:

Do you remember the name William Hansen?

Heath:

Bill Hansen, yes. It was he that was giving these lectures. I guess my recollection of that time is a little bit faint now. [Chuckling] But I remember he had — we had — notes that were dittoed, and so on.

Bryant:

To what extent did the flow of information follow the channels defined by the formal organization?

Heath:

Well, I can't really tell. Let's see.... One of the things I recall is seeing cigarettes posted on the notice board, and one of the first ones lighted with 10-centimeter radiation and then a few weeks later the first one lighted with 3-centimeter radiation. [Laughter] I guess at that time the organization hadn't really jelled to the extent that it did later on.

Internal Conflict at Rad Lab

Bryant:

You've mentioned one internal conflict. I'm sure there must have been others in an organization that was put together quickly and which was being pushed very hard.

Heath:

Well, there were some problems. Again, I hesitate to tell this one about Bill Wilson, [Chuckling] but he was quite — he was very — enthusiastic about his work, I guess. Perhaps a little over-enthusiastic, because on at least one occasion he had an oscilloscope that failed to work because maybe he'd put a big pulse into it or something. I'm not sure what. But anyway, the stores were closed where he could have got a new one, and so he went around the lab somewhere and just took somebody's scope. [Laughter] And then not only did he not leave a note to say that he'd taken it, but apparently a few days later he went around and spoke to the fellow who'd been using it and complained to him that it was a scope that didn't have the time base working properly. [Laughter] So these are the things that you remember.

AI to ASV Radar

Bryant:

What do you consider your most important contribution?

Heath:

Well, I don't know. I guess it was mainly helping to get that equipment assembled quickly to get it on the aircraft and then getting it over there.

Bryant:

Were you involved in the shift of emphasis from airborne intercept (AI) to ASV?

Heath:

Well, only to the extent that when we were over there, we disabled the nodding mechanism on the antenna so that, in effect, it could be used for ASV work, but that was about all. By leaving it at a constant vertical angle, you had a constant view of the sea and whatever there was to be seen.

Bryant:

Well, as described this morning, you witnessed what could be done with a microwave search radar.

Heath:

You paint a picture of the surface and ships. You can see the ships and the land.

Bryant:

So the resulting radars, H2S and H2X, had a scan pattern?

Heath:

Yes, that same sort of scan pattern. We were displaying it on a B scope, I think. The A scope was simply range, while the B scope had azimuth and range. But we didn't have the circular ones. And of course the antenna was just in the nose of the plane, so it wasn't supposed to be looking backwards. [Chuckling]

Bryant:

Do you have any other points that you want to volunteer? Observations you have?

Heath:

I don't think so at this point. It certainly was a very exciting time. It was a real privilege to be involved at that time with all the people that were there. It's very gratifying to see what a lot of them have done since.

Postwar Career

Bryant:

That's one of the last questions: What effect did your Rad Lab experience have on your subsequent career and your life then?

Heath:

Well, in the first place I ended up by deciding not to go on for a higher degree. I went to work for Canadian General Electric. Initially it was in FM radio broadcast equipment and later, to some degree, on radar and sonar. But I guess I could say I was really launched into that sort of thing with the National Research Council in Ottawa and the Radiation Lab, and I continued on with it.

Bryant:

You got married in December of '41.

Heath:

Yes.

Bryant:

Was that in Boston?

Heath:

No, out in Edmonton, Alberta.

Bryant:

Your former acquaintance a Canadian?

Heath:

Yes, yes. My wife and I had been going together when we were undergraduate students.

Bryant:

Do you have any observations on the social organization at the Rad Lab?

Heath:

As other people have said, I think it was a fantastic way to get engineers and physicists together and to learn from each other and from the practical experience that they were getting.

Bryant:

Were there people on the staff that you might say acted as consultants to you, or from whom you sought technical answers?

Heath:

It's hard to remember the details. Initially I was working on the antenna. Basically it was to determine what the pattern would be with the parabolic antenna. And that I guess had common direction from Bowen, really.

Bryant:

Thank you very much, Fred. I've enjoyed talking with you.