Radar History: The Lighthouse Tube

EE Rudy Dehn tells us about the development of the lighthouse vacuum tube which helped make better radar possible. He goes over the design of the tube and talks about the war years at General Electric in Schenectady.

This older gentlemen engineer's mind is still very lucid, this is a really interesting look back in time. The teams he's referring to were actually developing a new technology that hadn't existed. Brilliant and exciting work and you can still feel that excitement in his voice half a century later.

[flaplaya]

I about have tears. This type of genius doesn't do a YouTube interview often. This is why I am typing English and not Deutsch or Japonic and am proud of this mans expertise.

[speedyhaseeb]

These engineers are legends..
im an Electrical engineer and i feel we are nothing compared to those engineers from past...

[michaelshore]

The RAF in the 50s and 60s Used an IFF (secondary RADAR) transmitter, using theses tubes, RT264. Every body hated it, It was very difficult to work on and maintain. When we closed RAF western hill, in Malaya, we had the last one in service the F/S took us all outside Fired a volley and buried it. Fast forward 1998; I went to work for the US army in Europe supporting a Ground Controlled Approach (GCA) RADAR FPN-40 and there were RT 264s! as the secondary radar. (still in use when I left in 2012.

[terrystephens]

Many thanks for this very informative program, it’s so important to preserve these incredibly important scientific developments.

[bryansbooks]

It was a glorious time for Engineering.

[nixternixter]

This stuff was classified as Top Secret at the time, it must feel strange for him to be able to talk openly about it now, to even mention it to a friend or spouse was unthinkable at the time.

[gliderp]

I have a couple of those laying around somewhere. Those and a couple of 2C39's.

[islandboystv]

I would like to see this in higher res like 4k or 8k.
As an archival project, please consider someone getting funding for 8k media.

[dennisyoung]

Looks like a 446b tube or similar. I have one.

[publicmail]

With hi-def video you can see every hair on his sweater.