Evening star., 1953-08-24
Scientists 'Foresuw'
Invasion of Africa
Rudur Units 'Cumpoien'
Revealed by Dr.. Compton
By Thomos R. Henry

A theoretical campaign from the first
landings of American troops in North
Africa through the invasion of Italy
was planned in detail by a group Of
physicists at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology months before the first sol-
dierS sailed.
intimation that such a move was con-
templated, or that anybody else was
thinking along the same lines.
This is revealed by DR.. Karl Compton.
at that time president of the institu-
ton, in the introduction to the last
of % volumes on the scientific work
of adapting radar to militray purposes
carried out by the Office of Research
and Development during the war.
"One of the claims to fame of the
radar committee" says DR.. Compton.
"is the fact that it selected, as means
of focusing it's thought on practical
issues, the concept of landing oper-
alton carried across the Atlantic from
the United States to the north coast
of Africa, It included making land
ing, establishing beachhead and later
a base in Africa, and then moving
armies across North Africa with parallel
feet movements in the Mediterranean.
It also included finally crossing the
Mediterranean to Italy and working up
through Italy into the backdoor Of
Germany.
No Hint of Military Plan.
"At every stage in this hypothetical
process, of whose actual conception as
a military plan we had no information,
our committee attempted to analyze
each movement and hazard to see
whether radar could advantageously be
used. Then we asked ourselves whether
the radar already available was ade-
quate for this use or whether a new
type must be developed"
Radar now has reached the point,
says DR.. Vannevar Bush, chief of the
wartime Office of Research and Devel-
opment, where it can look into 800, 900
cubic miles of space. (This is about
$50 miles in every direction). 1t is as
efficient on a moonlesS night as on
the brightest day. The obscuring effects
of storms and fogs, which have beset
navigatorS from the earliest times, hold
no problems for it,"
The idea of radar, DR.. Bush says,
started with some chance observation
at the Naval Research Laboratory 20
years before the war. The actual first
radar however, was an instrument de-
veloped at the terrestrial magnetism
laboratory of the Carnegie Institution
Of Washington by DrS. Merle Tuve and
Gregory Brett for measuring the height
of electrical rejecting layers in the high
atmosphere, DR.. Bush says.
X
Hear Worms Gnawing.
Sounds made by week-old worms
gnaWing grain can be detected by a
device reported to the American Asso-
citation for the Advancement of Science
here.
1t may be a means Of telling the
degree to which any particular grain
in storage is infested by insects.
The apparatus, reported by DR.. r. E.
Adams and his associates of Kansas
State College, consists of an extremely
delicately adjusted radio amplifier, a
microphone in Sound-proof box, and
a loudSpeaker.
Insects in larval, pupal and adult
stages can be detected inside grain
kernels, the report says.
Two Types of Sound.
Two distinct types of sound are asso-
ciated with the larval and pupal, or
worm Stages-a low frequency scraping
noise and high frequency tearing or
rasping sound. From repeated observa-
tionS it appears that the low frequency
sounds are made by the movements Of
larvae and pupae inside the grain and
the high frequency sounds by the chew
ing of the grain.
"a practical application of this work."
says the report, sis means for rapid
evaluation of the effectiveness of fumi-
gants whereby the normal delay Of
several weeks, now necessary, can be
eliminated. A suitable sound detection
device for performing such tests in
mills and grain elevators now is under
construction.
Another application Of the principle
would be as a means for monitoring
grain within storage bins for infesta-
tion without sampling or removing the
grain from the bins, in much the same
manner as permanent thermocouple
systems now are used for checking the
heating of grain in storage"