SECRET MILITARY WEAPON

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 111, 4 February 1941, Page 7

SECRET MILITARY WEAPON

American Invention

The United States Army is pushing experiments with a secret military weapon created by four scientists from Stanford University, near San Francisco, and it is stated that the new device may rival the United States Navy’s bomb sight in importance. It is an ultra short wave radio generator called the klystron. If it fulfils the promise seen in its present stage of development it will furnish the army with an "invisible searchlight” that will find an enemy aeroplane in blackest night, through fog or cloud, and give the aeroplane altitude exactly. The value of sucji a weapon in Ihe European war, where the bombing of great cities is settling down to night raids, is obvious. The U.S. army is relying on the same company which developed its bomb sight—the Sperry Gyroscope Company —to develop the klystron. Three of the four Stanford University men who participated in its development will work at the Sperry firm at Long Island. They are William W. .Hansen, professor of physics, credited with inventing the klystron’s basic feature; Sigurd Vartan, a former commercial airlines pilot, and his brother, Russell, a television engineer.