RADIO BROADCAST OF AN Interview with project diana team members
On January 10, 1946, a small group of Army scientists at Camp Evans in Belmar, NJ, succeeded in bouncing radio waves off the moon, conclusively demonstrating that radio waves could pass through the Earth's atmosphere, introducing the possibility of space communication, and initiating the Cold War. To allow ample time for their superiors in Washington DC to confirm that they had indeed done what they claimed to have done, the team did not unveil their accomplishment until Friday, January 25th, when headlines appeared on the front page of the New York Times and the news rapidly spread around the world.
Two days later, on January 27th, newsman Tom Slater of WOR, a subsidiary of the Mutual Broadcasting System and a station better known for "The Jack Benny Program" and "The Fibber McGee and Molly Show," arrived at Camp Evans with his crew not only to interview five of the Project Diana scientists (DeWitt, Stodola, Webb, Kauffman, and Mofenson) but also--hopefully!--to record an actual moon bounce. Over the course of about 10 minutes, Jack DeWitt introduced each of his colleagues, who were asked by Slater to talk briefly about their personal lives, their professional training, and their role on the project. All the while, suspense about whether they would succeed in capturing echos of the radar pulses was teased by Slater; though they had already repeated the feat several times after the initial success, moon bounce on demand was not a certainty. At first, there were a few misses, but eventually DeWitt was able to exclaim, "Well, there it is!....That one was weak....Now there's a strong echo!"
Thanks to the stewardship of E. King Stodola, chief scientist on the team, an audio transcription of this historic interview has been preserved, though with further loss of clarity at each successive iteration. The Mutual Broadcasting System originally provided the Project Diana team with two studio-quality 78rpm acetate-coated disks, one for each half of the interview (leaving a gap in the transcription where the disks were changed). When the disk for the first half of the interview later broke, Stodola substituted a poorer-quality "off the air" recording (that is, made from a nonprofessional recording of the radio broadcast). He also added an approximately 1.5 minute introduction, providing background information about the recording and describing the equipment used to carry out Project Diana.
A recording of that recording was made on audiocassettes by Stodola's daughter in 1979 at Stodola's request, in the context of her oral history interview with him. Subsequently, members of the Stodola family have converted the audiocassette version to CDs, mp3 files, m4a files, and wav files. A satisfactory version of the WOR interview can be heard here. A clearer recording of the last few seconds, the re-enactment of the moon shot, can be heard here.
The actual echos are barely audible on these recording, although the people in attendance could obviously hear them and they were undoubtedly more discernible on earlier recordings of the broadcast. The following information may be helpful: The echos were received as 180Hz beeps. These beeps were not an inherent property of the echos, the pure tone frequency was "set" by the Project Diana engineers to be 1) within the range of human hearing, and 2) readily distinguishable from the transmit-receive relay noise that preceded the echo. What you should be listening for on the recording, therefore, is a low-pitched sound that is fairly deep and resonant.
Two days later, on January 27th, newsman Tom Slater of WOR, a subsidiary of the Mutual Broadcasting System and a station better known for "The Jack Benny Program" and "The Fibber McGee and Molly Show," arrived at Camp Evans with his crew not only to interview five of the Project Diana scientists (DeWitt, Stodola, Webb, Kauffman, and Mofenson) but also--hopefully!--to record an actual moon bounce. Over the course of about 10 minutes, Jack DeWitt introduced each of his colleagues, who were asked by Slater to talk briefly about their personal lives, their professional training, and their role on the project. All the while, suspense about whether they would succeed in capturing echos of the radar pulses was teased by Slater; though they had already repeated the feat several times after the initial success, moon bounce on demand was not a certainty. At first, there were a few misses, but eventually DeWitt was able to exclaim, "Well, there it is!....That one was weak....Now there's a strong echo!"
Thanks to the stewardship of E. King Stodola, chief scientist on the team, an audio transcription of this historic interview has been preserved, though with further loss of clarity at each successive iteration. The Mutual Broadcasting System originally provided the Project Diana team with two studio-quality 78rpm acetate-coated disks, one for each half of the interview (leaving a gap in the transcription where the disks were changed). When the disk for the first half of the interview later broke, Stodola substituted a poorer-quality "off the air" recording (that is, made from a nonprofessional recording of the radio broadcast). He also added an approximately 1.5 minute introduction, providing background information about the recording and describing the equipment used to carry out Project Diana.
A recording of that recording was made on audiocassettes by Stodola's daughter in 1979 at Stodola's request, in the context of her oral history interview with him. Subsequently, members of the Stodola family have converted the audiocassette version to CDs, mp3 files, m4a files, and wav files. A satisfactory version of the WOR interview can be heard here. A clearer recording of the last few seconds, the re-enactment of the moon shot, can be heard here.
The actual echos are barely audible on these recording, although the people in attendance could obviously hear them and they were undoubtedly more discernible on earlier recordings of the broadcast. The following information may be helpful: The echos were received as 180Hz beeps. These beeps were not an inherent property of the echos, the pure tone frequency was "set" by the Project Diana engineers to be 1) within the range of human hearing, and 2) readily distinguishable from the transmit-receive relay noise that preceded the echo. What you should be listening for on the recording, therefore, is a low-pitched sound that is fairly deep and resonant.