Camp Evans
&
Space Day

Click Space Day logo to visit Space Day WEB site. May 6th is also the National Day of Prayer.
Why should a small U.S. Army base in New Jersey (Camp Evans) be a part of NATIONAL SPACE DAY?

ANSWERs:

Here on January 10, 1946 engineers and scientists opened the space age electronically by bouncing radio signals off the moon. Why was this such a big deal? It proved communications from the earth to space was possible...many people though it impossible. It was called Project Diana. See NYTimes article below.
Here on October 4, 1957 engineers here were among the first to detect Sputnik This was a very frustrating event for these engineers, they were working with the Navy developing the U.S. satellite Vanguard. They expected their satellite to be the first, but the Soviet Union launched a technically simple satellite first. An engineer here even has an audio recording he made of the Sputnik I signal.
Engineers here contributed a number of vital electronic components to the Explorer I payload. Explorer I was America's first successful satellite launch.
Here engineers convinced the Navy's Vanquard team that Solar Cells, a Bell Telephone Laboratory invention, was the logical way to power satellites. On March 17, 1958 the first successful Vanguard launch contained a solar powered tracking transmitter. The transmitter functioned for over six years, it was developed and built here.
Here the world's first communication satellite SCORE was developed . It enabled President Eisenhower to send a holiday greeting on December 19, 1958 to demonstrate the value of satellites to communications.
Here the world's first weather satellite TIROS I was developed for NASA. TIROS - Television and Intrared Observation Satellite was launched April 1, 1960. LOCKHEED-MARTIN, sponsor of Space Day, continues the TIROS series of satellites using state-of-the-art technologies.

Camp Evans and National Space Day

Project Diana Site click on image to see our Diana page
The importance of Project Diana cannot be overestimated. The discovery that the ionosphere could be pierced, and that communication was possible between earth and the universe beyond, opened the possibility of space exploration that previously had been only a dream in adventure films and comic books. Just as Hiroshima opened the nuclear age in 1945, Project Diana opened the space age in January of 1946. It would take another decade before the first satellites were launched into space, soon followed by manned rockets, but Diana paved the way for all those achievements. It even initiated the tradition of naming such projects after ancient Greek and Roman gods, like Mercury and Apollo. For Fort Monmouth Project Diana was a pivotal event that built on World War II expertise, but pointed the way to the future. Page 24 &27.

Click here to hear a 1946 WOR radio broadcast of the Diana Moonshot (727KB)

Sputnik I click on Sputnik to see our Sputnik page.
It is very fitting that the equipment located at Camp Evans, specifically at the Diana Site, was one of the first to detect the ‘beep-beep-beep’ of Sputnik. It was at this location in 1946 that Lt. Col. John DeWitt and his group in Project Diana bounced a radar signal off the moon.

Back to InfoAge Homepage

Updated May 2, 1999

For further information contact
Fred Carl, InfoAge Virtual Director,
Fred-Carl@infoage.org

THE NEW YORK TIMES Friday, January 25, 1946 Vol XCV.. No. 32,143 Page 1.
CONTACT WITH MOON ACHIEVED BY RADAR IN TEST BY THE ARMY
Signal Sent From Laboratory in Jersey Is Reflected Back 2.4 Seconds Later
VAST POSSIBILITIES SEEN
Mapping of Planets, Defense Against Bombs in Cosmic Space Are Suggested
By JACK GOULD
   The first man-made contact with the moon was achieved on Jan. 10 when the Army Signal Corps beamed a radar signal on it and 2.4 seconds later received an echo reflected by the celestial body, it was announced yesterday. The signal, covering a round-trip distance of an estimated 450,000 miles, was sent out from the Evans Signal Laboratories at Belmar, N.J.
    Applications almost beyond immediate comprehension were foreseen as a result of the electronic achievement. New and far more accurate study of the universe, perhaps ultimately resulting in the detailed topographical mapping of distant planets, was anticipated. Detection of enemy missiles flying through cosmic space also was expected to be possible from the new definitive proof that radio waves could penetrate the earth's ionosphere.
   The sound that the moon sent back to the earth took the form of a 180-cycle note, or somewhat higher in pitch than the hum to b heard on a home radio receiver when a station is not tuned in. It lasted half a second. The Army also recorded the echo visually on an oscilloscope. There the epic-making peep appeared as a series of jagged, saw-tooth lines.
Army Announces Feat
   The official announcement that a radio signal had been bounced off the moon was made by Maj. Gen. George L. Van Deusen, Chief of the Engineering and Technical Service, Office of the Chief Signal Officer, at the annual dinner of the Institute of Radio Engineers at the Hotel Astor.
   The first word to reach the public, however came several hours earlier under circumstances anything but formal. A group of reporters crowded into a small upstairs reception room in the hotel and a quiet, 39-year-old officer, Lieut. Col. J. H. DeWitt, who supervised the experiment, announced what had been done.
   As the man who had finally "reached the moon," Colonel DeWitt and his four chief associates in the venture were modest in the extreme. Only upon the reporters insistence was there any revelation of the biographical material on the quintet.
   Colonel DeWitt, a former broadcast engineer in Nshville, Tenn., and a "ham" (amateur) radio operator, acknowledged that the results were the climax of his peacetime hobby to put a signal up to the moon. He said he failed in an attempt in 1940.
   Jacob Mofsenson, 32, a graduate of City College, who entered the Signal Corps in April 1942 was even more hesitant, but finally consented to tell his peacetime occupation. "I was a diamond dealer," he said with a laugh.
   The other principal participants were Dr. E. K. Stodola, 31, a graduate of Cooper Union, who was in charge of research; Dr. Harold Webb, 36, a former teacher of physics and mathematics at West Liberty College, West Liberty, Va., and Herbert Kauffman, 31, who had worked in radio in New Orleans.
Two Conducted First Test
Dr. Webb and Mr. Kauffman were actually the only two at the radar receiving equipment when the first echo came back from the moon, but said they had betrayed no particular emotion at the time over the event. "we looked for it and git the results," Dr. Webb said.
   Working on reaching the moon by radar was started soon after V-J Day, according to Colonel DeWitt, and on Jan. 10 preparations had been completed for a test. On that day, he said, the moon rose at 11:48 A.M. and a few minutes later the initial radar impulse was beamed heavenward on a frequencyof 111.6 megacycles. It was a 11:58 A.M., as the scientists remembered it, that the first flick of the light appeared on the oscilliscope denoting success.
   The tests were continued for five days, three tests being made as the moon rose and one as it set. Tests of the moon's "receptiveness" when it was higher in its arc were not
Continued on Page 18, Column 1
Contact With Moon Is Achieved By Radar in Army Experiments
Continued From Page 1
possible because of lack of suitable antenna equipment and some days no signal came back, apparently because pf propagation characteristics within the earth's atmospheric region.
   The peak power of the transmitter was three kilowatts but through use of a special antenna giving a gain of 200 its radiation effectiveness thereby being vastly increased. The strength of the moon was calculated at about three watts.
   Colonel DeWitt emphasized the "real trick" in making contact with the moon was not so much in the transmission but in the construction of a receiver of exceptional sensitivity to pick up the feeble scho from the planet. He estimated the sensitivity at .01 microvolts.
   The radar waves traveling at the speed of light -- 186,000 miles a second. The mean distance between the moon and the earth is calculated at 238,857 miles, but the greatest problem for the scientists at Belmar was to allow also for the distance variation involved in the relationship between the speed of the moon and the earth's movement. The moon's speed, it was explained, varies from 750 miles faster than the earth's rotation to 750 miles slower.
   Having demonstrated that a signal can reach the moon and return, Colonel DeWitt said the only problem left was the calculation of the time interval. When the echo came back in 2.4 seconds, the scientists were convinced they had achieved their aim "because there was nothing else there but the moon."
   To make sure that there might be no error, a small group pf scientists, not identified, visited Belmar and verified the conclusions.
"Hello" From Moon Expected
   Colonel DeWitt professed a dislike for speculation of a "Buck Rodgers or Jules Verne" character, but acknoledged that the Army scientists hoped to increase their transmitter's power so that it could be modulated by voice. "We should be able to say 'hello' and hear the moon say 'hello' back," he said. He quickly added: " I hope the moon doesn't answer, 'Good-by.'"
   In connection with the announcement in New York, the War Department in Washington issued a statement on the implications of the feat. Maj. Gem. Harry C. Ingles, Chief Signal Officer of the Army, noted that it could have "valuable peacetime as well as wartime applications, although it is impossible at this stage to predict with certainty what these will be." "One obvious possibility is the radio control of long-range jet or rocket-controlled missiles, circling the earth above the stratosphere," the War Department continued. "The German V-2 missiles have reached an altitude of sixty miles. "The primary significance of the Signal Corps achievement is that this is the first time scientists have known with certainty that a very high frequency radio wave sent out from the earth can penetrate the electrically charged ionosphere which encircles the reath and stratosphere. The several layers of the ionosphere start about thirty-six miles above the surface of the earth and extend to approximately 250 miles.
   "On this basis, the V-2 projectiles already have risen above the lower ionosphere levels, and it is now known that radio waves can completely penetrate the ionosphere. "The new technique will also be valuable for studying the effects of the ionosphere upon radio waves. Scientists already have learned that low and medium frequency waves are reflected by the ionosphere, and these reflections form the 'skywaves' used for long-distance broadcasting. The ionized layers also sometimes distort and bend radio waves, much as a prism distorts light waves. "Another valuable application may be the prevision of new astrnomical information. Not only may it be possible to construct detailed topographical maos of the distant planets with the aid of radar data, but scientists may be able to determine the characteristics of other celestial bodies by this means. "A less likely application of this new technique will be the possibility of radio control from the earth's surface of 'space ships' venturing thousands of miles from the earth, and the radio reporting of astonomical data electronically computed aboard such vessels."
   For the project, which Army officers informally labeled "Diana," the chief deviation from conventional radar application was in the use of radar of a much lower pulse-repetition rate, somwhere between three and five seconds, compared with the usual pulse rate of thousands of times a second. The length of time each pulse of energy existed varied from one-tenth to one-half a second, an "enormously long interval" compared with wartime standards. It was the factor of the rate and duration of the pulse, plus companion antenna problems, that led Colonel DeWitt and his associates to a relatively cautious approach in speculating on making contacts with Mars and Venus, as different distance ranges present new sets of problems.

Back to the Science Center Index

Back to the InfoAge Homepage

Camp Evans & Space Day

Camp Evans
&
Space Day