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Short Stories of Science and Invention

A Collection of Radio Talks by
Charles F. Kettering

INDEX

Weekly, from September 1942 to July 1945, Charles F. Kettering gave five-minute intermission talks about Science and Invention during the radio broadcasts of the General Motors Symphony of the Air.

Kettering invented the first automobile self-starter, and for 31 years directed a research laboratory for General Motors.

These radio talks are a fascinating legacy from the mind of a prolific inventor. The obvious anachronisms now add a historical perspective of the war-time period in which they were written.

These web pages now preserve some of the most popular stories for a new generation to read The text and art come from a General Motors booklet of selected talks. (Reprint, March 1959)

23.  R - A - D - A - R
A Radio Talk by
Charles F. Kettering


    Radar is simply an abbreviation of the words "radio detection and ranging" which means finding the direction of an object and how far it is away. Its development depended on the measurement of a very high speed and a very short time.

    Nearly a hundred years ago a Frenchman - Fizeau, measured the speed of light. He found it to be 186,000 miles per second or a distance equal to seven times around the earth.

Hertz    In 1886 Heinrich Hertz demonstrated that what we call radio waves had the same speed as light and could be reflected in the same manner. Three years later Nikola Tesla stated in an article that "By the use of these waves we may produce an electrical effect from a sending station and determine the position of a moving object, such as a vessel at "sea."

    In the year 1922 Dr. A. H. Taylor and his associate L. C. Young, while conducting some communication experiments at the Naval Research Laboratory near Washington noticed a steamer in the Potomac interfered with their signals. In 1930, as a result of these experiments, the Director of the Naval Research Laboratory submitted a report to the Navy Department titled "Radio -  Echo Signals from Moving Objects."


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- 100 -
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Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
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Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
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Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
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Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
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Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
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Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
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