Navy Electronics Laboratory

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Navy Electronics Laboratory
Established1945 Edit this on Wikidata (79 years ago)
DissolvedMerged into Naval Ocean Systems Center (1977)
Typeslaboratory Edit this on Wikidata
CountryUnited States Edit this on Wikidata

The U.S. Navy Electronics Laboratory (NEL) was created in 1945, with consolidation of the naval radio station,

atmosphere and of sound in the ocean.[2]

History

In November 1945, the Navy Radio and Sound Lab was renamed as Navy Electronics Laboratory.

Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command
(SPAWAR) in 1997.

In the 1960s, NELC was tasked with 4C: Command, Control, Communications and Computers.

Projects

Shipboard Antenna Model Range

Shipboard Antenna Model Range photograph showing location of model ship.

As one of its first projects, NEL began building its Shipboard Antenna Model Range. The non-metallic arch of this structure supports a transmitting antenna which is positioned toward a brass model ship on a turntable. The ground plane under the arch simulates the electrical characteristics of the ocean, allowing research on the properties of shipboard antennas to be carried out.[5]

Arctic submarine exploration

Battery Whistler facility, c. 1948.

It also began conversion of a

mortar emplacement, Battery Whistler, into an Arctic Submarine Laboratory. Scientific exploration of the Arctic Basin, and particularly providing the capability to operate attack submarines in the Arctic under the ice canopy, would become a key NEL mission.[6]

USS Baya and research vessel USS Rexburg
were part of a small but active fleet of ships used by NEL.

World headlines came early in this program from several events—the submerged voyage of

Waldo Lyon aboard as chief scientist and ice pilot. That same summer, the USS Skate cruised from the Atlantic to the North Pole and the central Arctic Ocean, surfacing 9 times through small holes in the ice cap. Dr. Eugene C. La Fond, head of NEL's Oceanography Branch, was chief scientist[7][8][9]
In March 1959, the Skate returned to the Arctic, under winter conditions, with Dr.
Waldo Lyon as chief scientist, and for the first time, the nuclear submarine was able to surface exactly at the North Pole.[8][9]

Bathyscaphe Trieste

Bathyscaphe Trieste
.

NEL also plunged into the undersea environment, acquiring the

Bathyscaphe Trieste and directing its 1960 dive over 35,000 feet (10.7 km) down into the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench near Guam
.

Radio telescopes

La Posta Astro-Geophysical Observatory

Interested in radio physics in general, the lab built a 60-foot (18 m)-diameter

Apollo space launches to predict solar
activity that might hamper communications from the ground to the space capsules.

Communications

In the area of communications, NEL developed

Polaris missile submarines, and began development of satellite
communication capabilities.

Requirements for handling the vast amount of shipboard communications during the intensifying

aircraft carriers
.

Computer science

The programming language dialect NELIAC was developed by and named after the lab.

NELIAC was the brainchild of Harry Huskey, at the time Chairman of the Association for Computing Machinery, who had suggested porting applications in a machine-independent form. ALGOL 58 gave NEL the framework for an implementation, and work commenced in 1958, but was not fully developed until 1961.

NELIAC was used at NEL to support experimental anti-submarine systems and Command and Control Systems development, and later, at the Navy Command Systems and Support Activity (NAVCOSSACT) in Washington DC in support of the National Emergency Command Post Afloat (NECPA) project which was installed on many large ships starting in 1966.

This was the world's first self-compiling compiler and was ported to many other computers in the Department of Defense, it also included the NELOS operating system development used for large scale applications (unique to the AN/USQ-20 Navy shipboard computer and its commercial version, the UNIVAC 490).

Many other versions existed for a variety of computers because the ease of portability and the rapid one-pass compile times.

Naval Command, Control and Communications Laboratory Center and beyond

In 1967, as part of the general Navy laboratory re-organization, NEL became the Naval Command, Control and Communications Laboratory Center. The name was never fully accepted, and in about six months it was changed to Naval Electronics Laboratory Center (NELC).

In 1971, the Antisubmarine Forces Command and Control System (AFCCS) and Naval Ocean Surveillance System (

Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific).[10]

Notes

  1. ^ "U.S. Naval Activities World War II by State". Patrick Clancey. Retrieved 2012-03-19.
  2. ^ unknown (1990). "Scientists at War, 1940 - 1945". Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, San Diego. Archived from the original on 2006-07-23.
  3. ISBN 1-55750-531-4
    .
  4. ^ "Cabrillo NM: Shadows of the Past (Chapter 5)". Archived from the original on 2007-06-30.
  5. ^ LaPuzza, Tom (2000). "SSC San Diego: Historical Overview". Archived from the original on 2009-07-03.
  6. ^ unknown (2006). "Arctic Submarine Laboratory Historical Timeline". Submarine Development Squadron Five: Detachment, Arctic Submarine Laboratory. Archived from the original on 2013-02-18.
  7. ^ La Fond, Eugene C. (1992). Bill and Bob - La Fond History (PDF). p. 127. Retrieved 30 July 2021 – via The Library, UC San Diego.
  8. ^ a b Calvert, James (1960). Surface at the Pole (First ed.). New York, Toronto, London: McGraw-Hill.
  9. ^ a b Calvert, James F. "Up Through the Ice of the North Pole". The National Geographic Magazine. CXVI, NO. 1 (July 1959).
  10. ^ "SSC Pacific Celebrating 70th Anniversary in 2010," SSC Pacific Daily News Bulletin, Sept. 4, 2014.

External links

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