Asbury Park Press December 12, 1949

Article courtesy of R. T. Kittell Sr. - Old Wall Historical Society. In this 1949 published article which gives an overview of the marconi origins of Camp Evans the Evans chief Engineer, George Eltz Jr., says the proximity fuse was developed at Evans during WWII.

Marconi Wireless Tower Still Serves at Evans

BIRTHPLACE OF RADAR - This is an aerial shot of a portion of Evans laboratories where radar was developed. The massive antenna overlooking Shark River was used when radar signals were bounced off the moon in 1946. The antenna has since been dismantled.

By Si Liberman

A little Italian man stood waiting atop a windswept cliff in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

After staring at his pocket watch for a few moments, he motioned to his assistant. The assistant handed him a kite. The man unraveled some wiry string, and a brisk wind swooped it skyward. In a matter of minutes, it was airborne.

This was no ordinary kite. Actually, the little man called it an antenna. Equipped with several makeshift wires, the kite remained aloft for almost an hour.

Suddenly, the man heard a crackling sound. A few bystanders heard the same noise. The assistant threw his arms in the air with joy and shouted something in Italian. The little dark-hired man nodded his head and smiled.

Several days later newspapers thruout the United States and Europe told the story of Guglielmo Marconi. His new wireless signal had bridged the Atlantic ocean. They said the scientist had received a wireless signal in Newfoundland from Poldhu, Cornwall – a distance of 2,100 miles on December 12, 1901.

That was 48 years ago today, and the great Italian scientist was 27 years old at the time.

The next time Marconi made the headlines was when he decided to construct a permanent commercial transmitting and receiving station in Wall Township, just above Shark River, more than a decade later.

Shore Site Selected

For several months in 1913 Marconi and his associates in the newly-formed American Marconi Wireless company surveyed the entire eastern seaboard. When the group examined the hilly bluff overlooking Shark River in West Belmar, Marconi decided his search had ended.

The strip of land where Evans Signal laboratories is now situated become the first permanent trans-oceanic communications center. That was late 1913.

Engineers immediately began construction of 45-room hotel to house the company’s personnel.

A special signal building was erected, and six enormous transmitting and receiving towers were built. Residents who lived near the site still remember the gigantic towers. They were between 400 and 500 feet of steel mounted on several thick layers of concrete.

One of these towers remains standing today at Evans, and the signals corps still manages to find use for it.

William Ward of Rumson, technical writer at Evans, said one of the main reasons the tower has not been dismantled is because of the high expense. "They really built things to stand in those days," said Mr. Ward.

Describing the thickness of the concrete tower base, the technical writer chuckled: "It’s built so deep, the bottom ends just this side of China."

After the United States entered World war I, the Navy took over the Marconi communications stations. And thruout the war, Mr. Ward said, the West Belmar station and another one in Washington, handled all the trans-Atlantic radio traffic. Some of the most important messages of the were dispatched from and received at the Navy station.

 
 

The armistice was signed, and the Marconi Company was handed back its station. But by then, the company had taken a new name, the Radio Corporation of America. Four years later in 1924 the station was abandoned.

In the years that followed, the buildings were used as a meeting place for the Monmouth Social club of the Ku Klux Klan, and a theological school, King’s College.

A few months before bombs fell on Pearl Harbor in 1941 the Signal Corps was in a market for a new research center. Like Marconi 28 years earlier had done, communications experts looked over the entire coastline. And like the Italian scientist, they agreed reception was no better along the coast than just beyond Shark River in West Belmar.

So the station was rebuilt.

In the spring of 1942, the war department announced that the installation would be named after Lt. Col. Paul W. Evans, a pioneer in the growth of the Signal Corps. And so, once again, the location where Marconi had received some of the first trans-Atlantic wireless messages became known as Camp Evans.
 
 

Radar Developed There

Shore residents will probably never be told the exact role Camp Evans played during World war 2, and is playing now. But some of the developments that came from that hilly section above Shark River without a doubt added considerable weight to the allied victory.

Had the Axis known, one of is prime targets would have been to wipe out Evans. For that was where radar equipment was first developed.

Radar, as the world now realizes, was one of the truly secret weapons of the last war. And it emerged from its tightspun cucoon with the atom bomb as the most destructive weapon to the Axis. Shore residents know now that the early radar warning sets used to sight enemy aircraft and ships approaching the Atlantic coast were perfected and controlled at Evans.

As the war went on, some 5,000 civilian workers were on the job at the camp night and day. Their first objective was early perfection of radar. Actually, radar was in the process of becoming a reality in the 1930’s at Fort Monmouth.

Soon the magic eye was aboard every United States warship to sweep the seas and to make sure no submarine was creeping near for the attack, to shepherd back stragglers into the convoy, to locate airplanes and landmarks in the darkness and to keep a lookout for ships out of sight over the horizon.

Signal Corps personnel there received a stout pat on the back in June of 1943 when James F. Byrnes, who was then war mobilization director, commended the radar work done at the Shore.

In a speech at Spartanberg, S.C., he said that work done by the Signal Corps units enabled the American fleet to sink Japanese battleships at a distance of more than eight miles away with two salvos. And all this, he said, was during an inky black and stormy night.

But radar wasn’t the only concern of Evans employees.

It can now be told that the famed proximity fuse was developed there. This recently was made public by the camp’s Chief Engineer George Eltz, jr.

According to Mr. Eltz, a pioneer in radio work, the proximity fuse controls explosion timing.

"It is to the advantage of an Army to be able to touch off shell explosions within 30 feet of the target," said the chief engineer. Theory is that the so-called pretarget explosion greatly enlarges the area in which damage is effective. And, in effect, destruction to personnel is made greater by the shrapnel pieces flying within feet of the target.

 
 

From the taxpayers standpoint, one of the laboratories most important jobs during the war and even now is one of standardization. A section, Mr. Eltz said, is devoted to standardizing electronic equipment for use by all branches of the service. It used to be when each service had different types of radios, but now all equipment is made to fit into all sets.

"This standardization," the chief engineer explained, "means tremendous savings for taxpayers, and also results in greater efficiency."

Signals to Moon

Evans bounced into the headlines in 1946 when Signal Corps workers succeeded in reaching the moon with a radar signal. Newspapers thruout the world recorded the almost unbelievable scientific achievement, and millions of persons looked with expectation for the clearing up of many astronomical mysteries.

In the next year, beaming radar signals o the moon became a common occurrence. However, insufficient funds made it necessary to give up the experiments, and a giant tower that was used was ripped down.

Mr. Eltz, who has been associated with the laboratories since 1942, reports that appropriations are once more being made available, and these tests may soon be resumed. Mr. Eltz says that when experiments are started again new equipment will be used.

The chief engineer, who makes his home in Avon, said that the Signal Corps isn’t so interested in making contact with the moon. "We don’t care whether anything or anybody is up there," Mr. Eltz said. "We’re studying wave propagation in those experiments," he added.

The atmosphere and the tricks it plays on radio is what Signal Corps researchers are probing They are trying to learn more about the ionosphere in connection with problems concerning the flight of radio guided missiles and aircraft.

And in their investigations, Evans workers are employing all the fields of science – physics, sound, light, heat, radar, etc.

Mr. Eltz refused to elaborate on the developments recorded at Evans in the study of wave propagation. The chief engineer agreed with technical writer, Mr. Ward, who said: "It’s not so much a secret, it’s just that we don’t want to contradict any statements made in the past by military officials."

Evans has also produced many developments in meteorology. Thanks to research being done at the West Belmar installation, weather forecasts are becoming more accurate every day, and meteorological equipment is being made cheaper.

Since the end of World war 2, civilian personnel there has been reduced. However, the work being done there still is highly important and classified. Chief Engineer Eltz points out that 75 percent of secret Signal Corps research work is done at the Wall township site.

About 1,000 persons are employed now and receive an annual salary of more than $5,000,000. Some 300 buildings grace the 25 acres of land that make up the base.

One of the newest innovations at the research center is a television station. Mr. Eltz says the station is used strictly for experiments and occupies channel eight.

Shore residents will find no fun watching the Evans television because only patterns are transmitted – no pictures. The laboratories’ station has a call letter of "APAV", and transmits between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

So, the site where Marconi started the business of wireless communication across the Atlantic has grown into one of the world’s great radio research centers. Marconi was mainly concerned with communications, and some of his wildest dreams have been realized, at Evans.

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