Science: Radar Man

Scottish-born Robert Watson-Watt was once a meteorologist in Britain's weather bureau. His interest at the time was thunderstorms, and he worked out a radio device to track their movements at great distances. Little by little, he learned how to track other things in the air besides thunderstorms.

As World War II approached, Watson-Watt's "radiolocation," now sponsored by the Air Ministry, became a top military secret. British firms were given orders to make peculiar parts for some mysterious device. When German bombers attacked Britain, the bombers found the island ringed with radar eyes that picked up the planes, tracked them accurately, and told...