Milestone-Proposal talk:Cavity Magnetron

Advocates’ Checklist

1. Is proposal for an achievement rather than for a person?
2. Was proposed achievement a significant advance rather than an incremental improvement to an existing technology?
3. Were there prior or contemporary achievements of a similar nature?
4. Has the achievement truly led to a functioning, useful, or marketable technology?
5. Is proposal adequately supported by significant references (minimum of five) such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or citations to pages in scholarly books? At least one of the references from a peer-reviewed scholarly book or journal article. The full text of the material, not just the references, shall be present. If the supporting texts are copyright-encumbered and cannot be posted on the ETHW for intellectual property reasons, the proposers shall email a copy to the History Center so that it can be forwarded to the advocate. If the advocate does not consider the supporting references sufficient, the advocate may ask the proposer(s) for additional ones.
6. Are the scholarly references sufficiently recent?
7. Is proposed citation readable and understandable by the general public?
8. Does the proposed plaque site fulfill the requirements?
9. Is the proposal quality comparable to that of IEEE publications?
10. Scientific and technical units correct? (e.g. km, mm, hertz, etc.) Are acronyms correct and properly upperercased or lowercased?
11. Date formats correct as specified in Section 6 of Milestones Program Guidelines? https://ieeemilestones.ethw.org/Helpful_Hints_on_Citations,_Plaque_Locations

Approval Log

Submitted 24 April 2023; 11 July 2023 -- approval by History Committee;

Re: Advocates’ Checklist -- Dmichelson (talk) 06:52, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

The IEEE Milestone program was modelled after similar Landmark programs at ASME and ASCE which emphasize the achievement rather than the people involved. While the IEEE History Committee has allowed a certain number of Milestone citations to include names, the official policy for many years had been not to allow them. The main concern was the potential for names in citations to perpetuate: 1) the myth of the lone or heroic inventor and 2) the notion that Milestones are awards. Indeed, it has been a challenge to convince people that Milestones are efforts "to share the achievements of the profession with both the IEEE membership and the general public, and to encourage historical scholarship within IEEE’s fields of interest."

There were also concerns that it was difficult for the cast of thousands who contributed to the success of an innovation to share in the reflected glow of this recognition if a handful of individuals were recognized in the citation. Consider the hero version of the TRIUMF Milestone:

First 500 MeV Proton Beam from the TRIUMF Cyclotron, 1974

At 3:30 pm on 15 December 1974, J. Reginald Richardson - TRIUMF’s chief designer and second director - manipulated the controls as the first 500 MeV proton beam was extracted from the TRIUMF cyclotron. Since then, TRIUMF has used its proton beams (and secondary beams of pions, muons, neutrons and radioactive ions produced in its experimental halls) to conduct pioneering studies in nuclear science and applications.

versus what was actually proposed and approved:

First 500 MeV Proton Beam from the TRIUMF Cyclotron, 1974

At 3:30 pm on 15 December 1974, the first 500 MeV proton beam was extracted from the TRIUMF cyclotron. Since then, TRIUMF has used proton beams from its cyclotron (and secondary beams of pions, muons, neutrons and radioactive ions produced in its experimental halls) to conduct pioneering studies that have advanced nuclear physics, particle physics, molecular and materials science, and nuclear medicine.

The atmosphere at the Milestone dedication would have been very different had the Richardson version been used. It would have been an posthumous recognition of a key individual rather than a shared accomplishment of the group.

Milestone proposers are only concerned with their own proposal, but the History Committee has to be concerned with the precedent that any particular decision sets for the entire program. Precedents that fundamentally change the character of the program are obviously an issue. The decision to allow names in Milestone citations effectively ground the program to a halt because it soon became obvious that no one had an objective measure of what justified allowing certain individuals to be recognized and how to balance the risks and unwanted precedents mentioned above.

In any case, progress has been made, and we’re now confident that we can share the following with you.

The purpose of the advocate's review is to:

1) confirm the significance of the achievement in general terms

2) assess the historical scholarship that underpin the proposal

3) identify any factual errors or shortcomings that need to be addressed in order to avoid perpetuating misconceptions

4) if names in citations are proposed, comment on whether this is justified

5) recommend possible improvements to the milestone citation

6) identify shortcomings in History Committee processes that this proposal has revealed and that need to be addressed.

Normally, I would post the following directly on the EHTW wiki, but I wanted to share it privately with you first for comment. I would be happy to have a video call with you to discuss any of these points.

Another expert reviewer is also looking at the proposal and will share his assessment during the next few days.

General Assessment

The proposal to recognize Development of the Cavity Magnetron has been very thoroughly researched, and I agree with the general premise, but the proposal needs to be tightened up, some inconsistencies addressed, and some factual errors corrected.

Factual errors

The required high power magnetron pulses were generated from a device the size of a small book and broadcast from an antenna only cm long, reducing the size of practical radar systems by orders of magnitude. The cavity magnetron thus enabled new compact radars to be designed for deployment on aircraft such as submarine hunters and night-fighters and also on the smallest of escort ships. A 10 cm wavelength radar achieves superior angular resolution and different objects have very different radar signatures...

1. I’m going to assume that they want to say "a few 10’s of cm." An order of magnitude is an order of magnitude and shouldn’t be ignored.

Professor of military history at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, David Zimmerman, states: “The magnetron remains the essential radio tube for shortwave radio signals of all types. It not only changed the course of the war by allowing us to develop airborne radar systems, it remains the key piece of technology that lies at the heart of your microwave oven today. The cavity magnetron's invention changed the world. [7]”

2. This is not correct. I love magnetrons and similar cross-field devices like the amplitron but, since the 1960’s, they’ve been niche devices. They are a great fit: 1) at frequencies between, say, 1 and 10 GHz and 2) when size and cost are important, and stability and coherence aren’t. They’re also remarkable for their efficiency. However, klystrons, travelling wave tubes, and later solid state amplifiers fill all other applications with solid state devices having the added bonus of much longer lifetime and frequency range. I recommend removing the highlighted text above.

(Point of interest: I'm also very aware of Prof. Zimmerman’s work and arranged to give his book, Maritime Command Pacific: The Royal Canadian Navy’s West Coast Fleet in the Early Cold War, as a gift to speakers at a workshop that I organized a few years ago.)

the Radiation Laboratory was set up on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop various types of Radar system using this cavity magnetron design. (This laboratory later expanded into the Lincoln Laboratory at Lexington MA to further improve the US air defense capability.)

3. This is not correct. While the establishment of MIT Lincoln Lab was championed by Rad Lab alumni physicist and electrical engineer Ivan A. Getting and physicist Louis Ridenour, and many of Lincoln Lab’s staff had previous experience with the Rad Lab, the Rad Lab was shut down on 31 Dec 1945. MIT Lincoln Lab wasn't set up until 1951. The only correct statement here is that Lincoln Lab’s initial focus was air defence.

H2S Mk. II was used for hunting U-boats when they had to surface to charge their batteries.

4. This is a slightly misleading statement. Early in the war, U-boats routinely ran on the surface and submerged only when conducting daytime torpedo attacks, or when they were themselves attacked. They did so because the speed and range of WWII-era U-boats were both very limited when they ran submerged. Also, sonar was not especially useful against a surface vessel.

Later in the war, when the mid-Atlantic gap closed, the situation changed. Initially, they ran on the surface mostly at night in order avoid detection by either ships or aircraft. With the advent of airborne microwave radar, even that was dangerous and they had to resort to the snorkel.

(Point of interest: After WWII, submarines became true underwater craft that ran faster submerged than on the surface, and, importantly, even faster than surface ships. This is the opposite of the situation in WWII, and is why destroyers and other anti-submarine warfare ships have carried helicopters since the 1950’s. WWII ASW tactics were simply no longer effective.)

Justification for Inclusion of Names in the Citation

The main justification seems to be that Randall, Boot, and Sayers received many awards. However, we’re back to the question of whether we’re celebrating the achievement or the people behind it. Moreover, as the proposers so accurately state:

As mentioned above, cavity magnetron designs were really “a simultaneous invention” in many different nations [3b] but dissemination of the various design details was somewhat patchy! Randall arrived at the inspirational idea of using concentric cavities when he researched the design of the original Hertz oscillator, which was an open single ring. Randall had earlier visited, while on holiday, the University College bookshop in Aberystwyth where he found and acquired a copy of Jones's translation of Hertz's "Electric waves".[3a,4c]

So it appears in retrospect that the Russian, German and Japanese scientists all possessed cavity magnetron technology, with somewhat reduced output power compared to the British developments at Birmingham University and GEC

[3b] Yves Blanchard, Gaspare Galati and Piet van Genderen, “The Cavity Magnetron: Not Just a British Invention”, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, Vol. 55, No. 5, pp. 244-254, October 2013. doi‎: ‎10.1109/MAP.2013.6735528

It doesn’t seem unreasonable to conclude that the biggest difference between Randall, Boot, and Sayer and the others is the cast of thousands that took the innovations of the Birmingham team and ran with them.

Expert Reviewers

Two expert reviews confirming the veracity of this evidence and providing support for including the names, as proposed in the citation, are provided by two distinguished Fellows of the Royal Society: Cyril Hilsum (Past Director of Research at the General Electric Company, IEEE David Sarnoff Medal in 1981, IEEE Third Millenium Medal, Foreign member of the National Academy of Engineering and Past President of the Institute of Physics); and Professor Hugh Griffiths (President of the IEEE AES Society 2012-13, IEEE AES Distinguished Lecturer, AES Radar Systems Panel chair from 2007-09, and chair of the Working Group which revised the IEEE Radar Definitions Standard P686 and reaffirmed the Radar Letter Band Standard. He was awarded the 2018 IEEE Pickard Medal).

Hugh is also the IEEE AESS historian. I almost met him in Princeton on 15 Feb for the AESS 50th anniversary but he had to stay in the UK due to a work commitment. Most unfortunate.

My question: How can the reviewers provide support for names in citations if they aren’t certain what the criteria or concerns are?

Plaque Citation

The development of the Cavity Magnetron, 1939-41

In this building the first cavity magnetron design to produce high-power microwave energy was conceived and developed by John Randall, Harry Boot and James Sayers. Evolutions of their revolutionary design generated kilowatts, enabling the first deployments of centimetric airborne radar systems. Large scale wartime magnetron manufacture was arranged in North America. Today these magnetrons power every microwave oven.

Later in the proposal,

This application seeks to celebrate the following technical achievements in the Birmingham laboratory, by Randall, Boot, and Sayers: significantly increased power level; outstanding improvement in efficiency; and securing frequency stability; all of which were essential to the magnetron's eventual successful deployment in the Battle of the Atlantic.

The latter paragraph contains elements that need to find their way into the citation.

Also, centimetric is a specialist term. Microwave means the same thing, and is more recognizable to the public.

My proposed revised citation:

Development of the Cavity Magnetron, 1939-41

In this building, University of Birmingham researchers John Randall, Harry Boot and James Sayers conceived and demonstrated fundamental ways to improve the output power, efficiency and frequency stability of cavity magnetrons. Developed further by others, these advances made it possible for the Allies to deploy microwave radar systems during the Second World War, and later use microwave systems for both cooking and industrial heating.

(64 words)

Rationale:

"“University of Birmingham researchers” makes the plaque understandable at the site and on the web without seeing odd or stilted

“fundamental ways” implies that this was not simply an optimization exercise and that ingenuity and insight were involved

“improve” implies that the concepts already existed in some form

“Developed further by others“ acknowledges the cast of thousands that actually made it possible for the Allies to take advantage of the efforts of Randall, Boot, and Sayers.

My concerns about our processes:

1. The underlying research by the proposers is very thorough and top notch. However, the proposal could benefit greatly from a more logical structure that draws the reader into the story. OTOH, we haven’t asked the proposers to draft an article or paper, although it is implied that the proposal is the basis for the final entry in ETHW.

Should we restructure the proposal format to more closely resemble an article or paper?

2. When the proposal was originally submitted, we were distracted by the names on plaques issue and had no clear process for engaging societies. With these issues largely resolved,

Should we start asking proposers to identify the Society within whose field of interest the proposal most naturally falls, in addition to the Section within whose geographic region the plaque will be placed?

The advocate could always counter-propose a different society if that made sense, but, IMHO, it would provide a more seamless way to involve the society in the review process from the outset, and is better than asking the advocate to do so, either implicitly or explicitly.

3. I believe that my language and rationale for drafting the alternative citation effectively counters concerns regarding the lone inventor myth.

Should we encourage other proposers to follow this approach, too?

Re: Re: Advocates’ Checklist -- Dmichelson (talk) 06:54, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I am confident that the proposer has addressed my concerns in the edits he has made to his proposal.

Reviewers’ Checklist

1. Is suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?
2. Is evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Plaque Citation?
3. Does proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?

Original Citation Title and Text -- Administrator4 (talk) 16:03, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

The development of the Cavity Magnetron, 1939-41

In this building the first cavity magnetron design to produce high-power microwave energy was conceived and developed by John Randall, Harry Boot and James Sayers. Evolutions of their revolutionary design generated kilowatts, enabling the first deployments of centimetric airborne radar systems. Large scale wartime magnetron manufacture was arranged in North America. Today these magnetrons power every microwave oven.

Comments on this Proposal -- Bberg (talk) 23:52, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

This is a well-written proposal, including its 65-word citation. However, per the requirements for a citation that includes names, the 2-paragraph section titled "Justification for Inclusion of Names in the Citation:" which is at the very end of the "historical significance" section should be moved so that it immediately follows the proposed citation.

In my opinion, there is enough support in this Justification section for inclusion of "John Randall, Harry Boot, and James Sayers" in the citation.

tightening up citation -- Amy Bix (talk) 17:47, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Nice milestone. I would just recommend some minor tightening-up of the last part, for conciseness, flow, and scope, as follows:

In this building, University of Birmingham researchers John Randall, Harry Boot, and James Sayers conceived and demonstrated fundamental ways to improve the output power, efficiency, and frequency stability of cavity magnetrons. Developed further by others, these advances facilitated the Allies' deployment of microwave radar systems in World War II. Microwave technologies were later adapted for industrial heating and everyday cooking.

Re: tightening up citation -- Bberg (talk) 19:41, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree that Amy has nicely reworded the latter portion of the citation.

Re: tightening up citation -- Dmichelson (talk) 07:04, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Amy's edit distorts the meaning. RF and microwave heating do not require magnetrons and would have happened without magnetrons. If you want to split the sentence, I would recommend replacing microwave technologies with cavity magnetrons and adding the word both, as shown below. My only concern is that it changes the focus from 'these advances' to 'cavity magnetrons' and makes the citation longer.

In this building, University of Birmingham researchers John Randall, Harry Boot, and James Sayers conceived and demonstrated fundamental ways to improve the output power, efficiency, and frequency stability of cavity magnetrons. Developed further by others, these advances facilitated the Allies' deployment of microwave radar systems in World War II. Cavity magnetrons were later adapted for both industrial heating and everyday cooking.

Re: Re: tightening up citation -- Sselleri (talk) 13:39, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

I must second the point. The word Magnetron should be repeated in the second sentence. On the other hand, the word Microwave(s) appears only in the previous sentence, and it is what a everyday microwave oven user recognizes, so everyday cooking might not swithch on a light in the average people reading the milestone.

I might suggest. editing the last suggestion:

In this building, University of Birmingham researchers John Randall, Harry Boot, and James Sayers conceived and demonstrated fundamental ways to improve the output power, efficiency, and frequency stability of cavity magnetrons. Developed further by others, these advances facilitated the Allies' deployment of microwave radar systems in World War II. Cavity magnetrons were later adapted for industrial heating and also are the core of everyday microwave ovens.