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The Evans Signal Laboratory, located on the site of the early wireless developments by Marconi at Belmar, N. J., is the out growth of the Radio Position Finding Section of the Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories established at Fort Monmouth in 1917, and more recently the Signal Corps Radar Laboratory. It was established to fulfill the expanding scientific and technical requirements of the Army for ground radio detection equipment. After the feasibility of detecting aircraft and ships by a special application of radio, commonly called "Radar", had been proved by demonstration, the Laboratory concentrated its efforts on constant improvements of existing equipments and the development of specific types of detectors to meet the rapidly increasing requirements of the Army. The early success of the Laboratory is evidenced by the fact that effective long range aircraft warning equipment was in the field at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Early in 1945 most of the functions and personnel of the Eatontown Signal Laboratory were assigned to Evans in order to transfer the Eatontown physical plant to the Army Air Forces.
As a result, the Evans Signal Laboratory became responsible for the entire Signal Corps research and development program in Meteorology, Radio Direction Finding, and Sound and Light in addition to its already established responsibilities for all Army
Ground Forces Radar.
The Laboratory has grown rapidly from a small permanent staff of scientists and technicians to an impressive plant occupying 250 acres and including numerous laboratories, shops and administrative offices. Approximately 1300 scientific technical and clerical employees and 58 officers of various grades are presently employed at ESL.
The Director and Officer Staff of the Laboratory are supported by a selected body of civilian scientists, engineers, and technicians equipped by education and experience to carry forward the complex problems of basic research, system development, and the industrial coordination, including the preparation of specifications required to effect and expedite manufacture of Army Electronic equipment. While the basic purpose for which the Laboratory was established is research and development, wartime necessity forced additional emphasis on system tests where compliance with the Army's requirements, based on service experience, can be determined and deficiencies corrected before production proceeds too far.
New that the war has ended a long range peacetime program is being formulated which transfers the Laboratory's major emphasis back to research and development.
The facilities of the Evans Signal Laboratory have been de¬veloped to meet not only the re¬quirements imposed by war but to provide a physical plant well adapted to carry on this necessary long range postwar research and development program.
The Laboratory functions are executed by an executive staff and eight operating branches. Many of these functions are of a confidential or secret nature. However, it can be said that the Laboratory scientists and engineers were pioneers and still are leaders in the development of Army electronic equipment for which the Laboratory has been responsible.
In addition to the extensive experimental and development work , on radar components and systems, Meteorological, RDF, and Sound and Light equipment, Evans Signal Laboratory is responsible for the technical coordination of all problems pertaining to the more than 1500 types of vacuum tubes used by the Army Signal Corps. In this capacity the Laboratory guides development of the tubes, prepares specifications, conducts type approval tests, and makes periodic checks of production samples to insure quality control.
The important role played by the Evans Signal Laboratory in providing highly effective electronic equipment for the Army is greatly facilitated by close cooperation with industrial and university laboratories, and with appropriate committees and divisions of the National Defense Research Committee. It is hoped that the great importance of electronic research and development manifested by the war will not diminish during peace so that the Laboratory may continue, through an extended research program to provide technical improve¬ments and new designs which will insure superior equipment for our Army.
RADIO DIRECTION FINDER SAVED LIVES
Radio Set SCR-291, a transportable ground direction finder, has performed valuable service during the war and since, in guiding aircraft to their bases, locating their positions when lost, and in directing rescue parties to the location from which a plane reported trouble.
Developed during 1942 by Federal Telephone and Radio Corporation, in collaboration with engineers of the Radio Direction Finding Branch, ESL, the urgency for this equipment was so great that quantity orders were placed at the same time that its development began.
Many hundreds of these direction finders now serve Army Air Forces at locations throughout the world, wherever long distance flights are made. SCR-291's may be found on all continents and on isolated islands along the trans-oceanic air routes.
The Direction finders are operated in nets of three to six stations, under the control of a plotting canter, where the direction or bearing from each of the stations td the plane is plotted on a map to determine its position. The SCR-291 gives reliable bearings at any distance over which the aircraft can communicate, using its high frequency transmitter. In practice, bearings are plotted at distances up to 1500 miles or more and assistance promptly rendered if the plane is in trouble.
Technical features of the equipment includee "instantaneous" visual bearing indication in the form of a cathode-ray pattern which points in the direction of a signal as short as one dot or dash. The antenna system is a crossed U Adcock type which gives accurate results on either ground-wave or sky-wave signals.
In contributing to the engineering, testing installation and operation of these equipments in the field, Messrs. Charles B. Moore, Anthony DiGiacomo, and Alan Slotkin of the Direction Finding and Intercept Section, Evans Signal Laboratory, have shown again how valuable service can be rendered to the Army by the Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories.
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