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Navy Electronics Laboratory
The U.S. Navy Electronics Laboratory (NEL) was created in 1945, with consolidation of the naval radio station, radar operators training school, and radio security activity of the Navy Radio and Sound Lab (NRSL) and its wartime partner, the University of California Division of War Research. NEL’s charter was “to effectuate the solution of any problem in the field of electronics, in connection with the design, procurement, testing, installation and maintenance of electronic equipment for the U.S. Navy.” Its radio communications and sonar work was augmented with basic research in the propagation of electromagnetic energy in the atmosphere and of sound in the ocean.
In November 1945, the Navy Radio and Sound Lab was renamed as Navy Electronics Laboratory. 80% of the Point Loma Military Reservation evolved into the Naval Electronics Laboratory Center (NELC) at the end of World War II. In turn NELC was merged into the Naval Ocean Systems Center (NOSC) in 1977. This eventually was merged into the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) in 1997.
In the 1960s, NELC was tasked with 4C: Command, Control, Communications and Computers.
As one of its first projects, NEL began building its Shipboard Antenna Model Range. The non-metallic arch of this structure supports a transmitting antenna which is positioned toward a brass model ship on a turntable. The ground plane under the arch simulates the electrical characteristics of the ocean, allowing research on the properties of shipboard antennas to be carried out.
It also began conversion of a World War II mortar emplacement, Battery Whistler, into an Arctic Submarine Laboratory. Scientific exploration of the Arctic Basin, and particularly providing the capability to operate attack submarines in the Arctic under the ice canopy, would become a key NEL mission.
World headlines came early in this program from several events—the submerged voyage of USS Nautilus from the Pacific to the Atlantic, via the North Pole, in 1958, with NEL’s Dr. Waldo Lyon aboard as chief scientist and ice pilot. That same summer, the USS Skate cruised from the Atlantic to the North Pole and the central Arctic Ocean, surfacing 9 times through small holes in the ice cap. Dr. Eugene C. La Fond, head of NEL's Oceanography Branch, was chief scientist In March 1959, the Skate returned to the Arctic, under winter conditions, with Dr. Waldo Lyon as chief scientist, and for the first time, the nuclear submarine was able to surface exactly at the North Pole.
NEL also plunged into the undersea environment, acquiring the Bathyscaphe Trieste and directing its 1960 dive over 35,000 feet (10.7 km) down into the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench near Guam.
Interested in radio physics in general, the lab built a 60-foot (18 m)-diameter radio telescope on Point Loma, and in 1964, NEL began construction of the La Posta Astro-Geophysical Observatory on a 3,900-foot (1,200 m) site in the Laguna Mountains, 65 miles (105 km) east of San Diego. The observatory played a major role in solar radio mapping, studies of environmental disturbances, and development of a solar optical videometer for microwave research. Its 60-foot (18 m) dish, which could both transmit and receive, was used for important Center research programs in propagation and ionospheric forecasting which was used during a number of Apollo space launches to predict solar activity that might hamper communications from the ground to the space capsules.
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Navy Electronics Laboratory
The U.S. Navy Electronics Laboratory (NEL) was created in 1945, with consolidation of the naval radio station, radar operators training school, and radio security activity of the Navy Radio and Sound Lab (NRSL) and its wartime partner, the University of California Division of War Research. NEL’s charter was “to effectuate the solution of any problem in the field of electronics, in connection with the design, procurement, testing, installation and maintenance of electronic equipment for the U.S. Navy.” Its radio communications and sonar work was augmented with basic research in the propagation of electromagnetic energy in the atmosphere and of sound in the ocean.
In November 1945, the Navy Radio and Sound Lab was renamed as Navy Electronics Laboratory. 80% of the Point Loma Military Reservation evolved into the Naval Electronics Laboratory Center (NELC) at the end of World War II. In turn NELC was merged into the Naval Ocean Systems Center (NOSC) in 1977. This eventually was merged into the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) in 1997.
In the 1960s, NELC was tasked with 4C: Command, Control, Communications and Computers.
As one of its first projects, NEL began building its Shipboard Antenna Model Range. The non-metallic arch of this structure supports a transmitting antenna which is positioned toward a brass model ship on a turntable. The ground plane under the arch simulates the electrical characteristics of the ocean, allowing research on the properties of shipboard antennas to be carried out.
It also began conversion of a World War II mortar emplacement, Battery Whistler, into an Arctic Submarine Laboratory. Scientific exploration of the Arctic Basin, and particularly providing the capability to operate attack submarines in the Arctic under the ice canopy, would become a key NEL mission.
World headlines came early in this program from several events—the submerged voyage of USS Nautilus from the Pacific to the Atlantic, via the North Pole, in 1958, with NEL’s Dr. Waldo Lyon aboard as chief scientist and ice pilot. That same summer, the USS Skate cruised from the Atlantic to the North Pole and the central Arctic Ocean, surfacing 9 times through small holes in the ice cap. Dr. Eugene C. La Fond, head of NEL's Oceanography Branch, was chief scientist In March 1959, the Skate returned to the Arctic, under winter conditions, with Dr. Waldo Lyon as chief scientist, and for the first time, the nuclear submarine was able to surface exactly at the North Pole.
NEL also plunged into the undersea environment, acquiring the Bathyscaphe Trieste and directing its 1960 dive over 35,000 feet (10.7 km) down into the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench near Guam.
Interested in radio physics in general, the lab built a 60-foot (18 m)-diameter radio telescope on Point Loma, and in 1964, NEL began construction of the La Posta Astro-Geophysical Observatory on a 3,900-foot (1,200 m) site in the Laguna Mountains, 65 miles (105 km) east of San Diego. The observatory played a major role in solar radio mapping, studies of environmental disturbances, and development of a solar optical videometer for microwave research. Its 60-foot (18 m) dish, which could both transmit and receive, was used for important Center research programs in propagation and ionospheric forecasting which was used during a number of Apollo space launches to predict solar activity that might hamper communications from the ground to the space capsules.