[ETS/PARC List] Fw: [NJARC] FW: InfoAge Event Reminder, Sunday - April 27, 2008

[Victor Pennetta, Jr.]

>  Hello All,
>
>    A reminder of this talk - Sunday 2:00 PM,
>
>
> The Important Roll of quartz crystals in WW2
>     If you love World War 2 history and radio technology this event is for
> you.  In the Marconi Hotel at Camp Evans on Sunday, April 27 at 2:00 PM
> author Richard J. Thompson Jr. will relate an amazing industrial and
> technology feat of World War 2.
>     The feat was creating a quartz crystal industry where none existed.
The
> key to victory was reliable communications between troops and command.  At
> the onset of the war the allies did not have reliable supply of quality
> quartz crystals for radios that would hold the selected channel.  When you
> lost your radio channel you had problems.  You could not get warnings of
an
> enemy attack or call for reinforcements.  Quartz crystals that would hold
> the desired channel were needed in every radio, radar unit and beacon.
> Radios were needed in every plane, tank, command center, for spies and for
> every platoon.
>     In 1942 the U.S. was threatened with a serious shortage of imported
> quartz and domestic production was negligible.  Millions of crystals were
> needed and there was no industry capable of producing them.   Hear how
Fort
> Monmouth engineers gave the allies the key to victory by meeting the
> production challenge, solving the myriad of difficult problems that arose
in
> the field and how they laid the foundation for the post war electronics
and
> TV industry.
>     The epi-center of this world wide drama was the Long Branch Signal
> Laboratory (LBSL) once located on Joline Ave in Long Branch.  There highly
> specialized technicians, many woman, used their home front energies to
make
> sure allied troops had the finest crystals possible.
>     "We were heavily armed and we had crystals" is how veteran Irwin
> Gottlieb of the Big Red One, attributed their ability to defend themselves
> against often times much larger German units.  This is strong testimony to
> the value of communications to the front line troops.   A WW2 poster seen
in
> a photo of a crystal cutting room in the LBSL and quoted in a 1943 Time
> Magazine article reads, "GIVE US THE CRYSTALS AND WE'LL PUT THE
> ... -------ON THE RUN."  In radio code the dots & dashes spell SOB.
>      Author Richard J. Thompson, Jr. PhD is the Dean of Mathematics and
> Sciences at The College if Saint Rose in Albany.  The event at the InfoAge
> Science-History Center is sponsored by the New Jersey Coast Section of the
> IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.) and the
book
> is endorsed by the IEEE History Center at Rutgers.  There is no admission
> charge and copies of the author signed book will be on sale.   See
> www.infoage.org for directions.