Radar

Radar (patent 292,185) grants us the power to detect objects over distances that the eye cannot see, and through obstacles that it cannot overcome. We take such power for granted in our modern age, but for the majority of human history it would have been considered no less than miraculous.

Our modern aviation industry would not have been possible without this technology. Consider that there are over twenty-five thousand flights per day, in Europe alone. An aeroplane in flight is a fragile tube of aluminium hurtling through freezing air thousands of metres above the ground. How strange that crashes are so rare that each is a news worthy event. Such safety is made possible by radar.

Now think of driving. No-one like getting a ticket, and we have all cursed when it happens. Yet consider the bloody carnage our roads would be if people could drive at top speed with impunity, even in pedestrian areas, or head through red lights with no consequences except terminal ones. Radar traps may be an annoyance, but think of what they spare us.

And still more: You know the poem “…all for the want of a horseshoe nail”. It is said that, if not for Radar, the Battle of Britain would have been lost. Nazi Germany would have conquered Britain but for twenty stations lining the east coast, all active twenty-four hours a day from Good Friday, 1939. Consider what Radar spared us.

Submitted by: Hugo Schmidt