MIT Radiation Laboratory

"The name Radiation Laboratory, or "Rad Lab," was chosen to be intentionally deceptive, creating the perception to those on the outside that the laboratory was working on nuclear physics, a discipline that was seen as too immature to have an impact on the war effort. During the fall of 1940, the Rad Lab sprang to life on the MIT campus, and by December, a primitive two-parabola system had already been emplaced and was undergoing initial testing on the rooftop of Building 6 at MIT.

During the next five years, the Radiation Laboratory made stunning contributions to the development of microwave radar technology in support of the war effort. Inventions included airborne bombing radars, shipboard search radars, harbor and coastal defense radars, gun-laying radars, ground-controlled approach radars for aircraft blind landing, interrogate-friend-or-foe beacon systems, and the long-range navigation (LORAN) system. Some of the most critical contributions of the Radiation Laboratory were the microwave early-warning (MEW) radars, which effectively nullified the V-1 threat to London, and air-to-surface vessel (ASV) radars, which turned the tide on the U-boat threat to Allied shipping. In November 1942, U-boats claimed 117 Allied ships. Less than a year later, in the two-month period of September to October 1943, only 9 Allied ships were sunk, while a total of 25 U-boats were destroyed by aircraft equipped with ASV radars (Buderi, pp. 155–169). "

As a grad student in the 1970's I was working on a magnetron design for a plasma physics experiment. The best resource for such work was a the MIT Rad Lab series of books, a huge collection. What a gift to mankind to have that stuff published in such detail.

This reminded me of the “Isotope Storage Lab” in the basement tunnels of the University of Rochester medical center annex. I always thought it sounded cool when I would walk by it… until I learned of the horrific experiments conducted at the med center in the 1940’s where they injected unaware patients with plutonium to see what would happen.

Though many went on to make Lincoln lab, the on campus successor to the Rad Lab at MIT is the research laboratory of electronics (RLE) which houses the research of like 100 PI's and hundreds of graduate students: https://www.rle.mit.edu/about/history/

Love the story of the Rad Lab and radar before and during WW2. Two relevant books I've read recently(ish) that I'd recommend to anyone interested in learning more would be 1) The Invention That Changed the World by Robert Buderi and 2) a biography of Alfred Loomis, Tuxedo Park by Jennet Conant.

I noticed from the logo that 2026 is evidently the 75th anniversary of the Lincoln Laboratory.

Ye olde building 20, how we loved to hate you.