Restoration of Alan Turing's Preferred Interception Receiver, the RCA AR-88
Details
Come out to hear Joe Jesson and Jonathan Allen speak about the RCA AR-88, a receiver that was vital in capturing German messages during WWII. Jesson will describe the genesis of this best-of-breed interception receiver initiated by David Sarnoff’s product leadership in order to exceed allied design and production requirements. What makes this interception receiver world-class and of interest to TCNJ engineering students?
Title: Restoration of Alan Turing's Preferred Interception Receiver, the RCA AR-88; RCA's greatest communications receiver
Open to all; no admission charge.
Sponsored by the Life Society, IEEE PCJS, and the IEEE Jersey Coast Section.
Speakers: Joe Jesson, Jonathan Allen
Abstract: During WWII, the interception of German encrypted wireless communication by Britain's many Y-stations where operators, listening to banks of RCA AR-88 receivers, provided the captured encrypted messages in order for Bletchley Park to then process these messages into plaintext. Messages to be decrypted were handed to Alan Turing's - of the movie's Imitation Game fame - Hut 8 team at Bletchley Park.
Often overshadowed by the truly great Alan Turing, the unsung heroes I found were the intercept, or Y-station, operators, Gordon Welchman (Hut 6), and David Sarnoff. Joe Jesson will explain how their ground-breaking methods have been adopted by today's NSA! Joe will describe the design requirements issued from RCA's David Sarnoff to his engineering team where he issued tough-and-expensive specifications and production delivery demands. RCA production was focused in Camden, NJ but the international WWII partner (Soviet, British, and Canadian) demand was handled by RCA's Export Sales under Charles Roberts in Camden, New Jersey. Joe will discuss the design requirements through winning through performance and contrast the AR-88 receiver with the competitive receiver,of its day, e.g. National's HRO. Jonathan Allen will speak about his excellent progress he has made in his restoration work at the Sarnoff Museum on the TCNJ Campus.
Finally, Joe asked his TCNJ Electronics Lab students, as a final Lab project, to compare a SPICE RF bandpass AR-88 filter simulation with a vacuum tube SPICE library model derived from modifying a (biased) FET amplifier model. He will show these results generated by our Lab students. As a third-generation New Jersey native researching WWII communications, I was proud of the leadership shown by David Sarnoff and the multiple (estimated at 2) year reduction of the duration of WWII by the great work at Bletchley Park.
October 13, 2017, 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Roscoe L. West Building, Room 201 (Map pin is accurate. (https://maps.google.com/maps?q=40.27118853894001,-74.7775502883606))
The College of New Jersey
2000 Pennington Road
Ewing, NJ 08628
Free meeting: all welcome, no admission charge
https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/47403
For more information, contact Joe Jesson: Jejesson4 gmail com
Photo by Badseed, used with permission CC BY-SA 3.0 [( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 )], via Wikimedia Commons
Speakers:
Joseph Jesson is TCNJ Adjunct Electrical Engineering Lecturer, CEO of RFSigint, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Able Devices and CTO of Assurenet. Joe has 25+ years of experience in designing and implementing - through production - Telematics, M2M, and IoT wireless sensors & embedded systems and was awarded General Electric's top Innovation prize, the Edison Award, in 2007. Joe was awarded over 15 patents, is IEEE Princeton Life Chair, holds graduate degrees from DePaul University in Chicago, and currently finishing a DSc doctoral dissertation at NJCU.
Jonathan Allen received his Ph.D. in physics from Washington U. in St. Louis. Continuing in the area of his thesis, he developed new instruments for analyzing atmospheric aerosol pollution. His career then turned to the emerging solar power industry where he developed RF power systems for plasma deposition of thin film photovoltaic materials. He has also taught electronics engineering. Now semi-retired, he is an independent consultant specializing in radio frequency R&D and custom instrumentation For the past four years, Dr. Allen has worked as a volunteer at the Sarnoff Collection at TCNJ, restoring and documenting the Collection’s electronic artifacts and guiding visitors.