Island Thinking by Sophia Davis

Author:Sophia Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789811396762
Publisher: Springer Singapore

9 Creating Visibility

The analogy of radar with vision slips over the negotiations and constructions involved in creating the image. As part of Watson-Watt’s attempts to get the “air defence VIPs” on board, he invited a stream of these men to watch demonstrations of the RDF technique right from the beginning. Wilkins reflected that Watson-Watt repeatedly invited guests long before the equipment’s performance had been reliably established, which sometimes jeopardised the project’s credibility and future (Wilkins 1981, 145). The failure of one of the early demonstrations at Orford Ness was excused by storm activity (Guerlac 1987, 136), and in an early demonstration at Bawdsey, before the equipment had even been calibrated, the bombers could be heard overhead before any signals could be seen on screen (Hanbury Brown 1991, 14). At these tests, Watson-Watt made claims about signals that others could not see (Wilkins 1983, 17; Bowen 1987, 15), even though it was vital that the researchers did not appear to be merely seeing things.

After the failure of the display in that Bawdsey demonstration, a new measure seemed necessary to keep the air defence “VIPs” enroled in the technology. Tizard had begun losing patience with Watson-Watt, and the Cambridge physicist, Edward Appleton, who had already made five visits to Bawdsey, began mediating between Bawdsey and the Tizard Committee. University physicists had been involved in the radar research from the beginning, but Appleton’s role marked a new type of involvement for university scientists in this military technology (McCloskey 1987, 147). Appleton assured Tizard that the failure was due to the staff splitting their time between planning the chain of stations and making Bawdsey operational. When problems at Bawdsey persisted into 1937, Tizard became more anxious. Appleton was sure the problem lay with Watson-Watt, who rapidly switched researchers between projects and seemed always to be at the Air Ministry determining radar policy (Zimmerman 2001, 120). Appleton’s mediation helped keep the Tizard Committee on board until the next major demonstration in April 1937, which was deemed successful, and prompted the Air Staff to permit 18 more stations (Guerlac 1946, 143). Shortly afterwards, Rowe was brought to Bawdsey, and Watson-Watt was “promoted” away to London.

In addition to these social processes involved in establishing RDF, the development of technologies of display played a key role. As has been well established in studies in the history of science, there is no simple act of observation, and scientific representations depend heavily on the theories that influence their creation, as well as on the people and processes drawn into alignment to bring them into being (Rudwick 1976; Lynch and Edgerton 1988; Knorr-Cetina and Amann 1990; Schaffer 1998). Earlier I described factors like long wavelengths and flat landscapes being part of an attempt to normalise and geometrise the space around, reducing the background “noise” interfering with being able to detect a clear signal. Such strategies attempted to take away the particularities of place, making the landscape disappear. This balance between planes’ and landscapes’ visibility shifted as new radar technologies were developed.

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