1939 the peak of ww2 during the battle of Britain, British intelligence received the location of a number of incoming bombers. The bombers were located and destroyed; the destruction of the bombers was celebrated, but not nearly as much as the invention of the device that provided their location. This new device was radar, and it is responsible for everything from location detection to forecasting the weather. Radar has a long history dating back before the 20th century, where physicist Heinrich Hertz began his experimentation with radio wave. It was this experimentation that laid the foundation for younger scientists to eventually develop modern day radar. It was not until the war however that radars true potential was discovered, the ability to know if enemy aircrafts were within attacking range, as well as their location. Radar changed the ways wars were fought, however, their usefulness was not exclusive to the battle field radar has had a profound effect on weather tracking, air traffic control, and police radar guns, to name a few. Peculiar how the experiments of a scientist in the 19th century could have so a profound effect on modern day society.
The history of radar began with the experiments done by Hertz, but those experiments were no where no close to the radar enjoyed by modern day society. Following hertz came a man by the name of Christian Huelsmeyer; Huelsmeyer invented a device that implemented the use of radio echoes to identify other ships. The device called the telemobiloscope was never produced out of lack of interest. This however paved the way for scientist Nikola Tesla to discover a number of principles describing the physics of radar units. The discoveries of Tesla were crucial in the development of radar, and were used by numerous scientists following Tesla. Scientist Robert Watson-Watt using the principles defined by Tesla used the radio waves produced by lightning to develop the weather tracking system. Following his invention of weather tracking Watson and his assistant Arnold Wilkins set up receiving equipment and were able to show the location of planes eight miles away. As more and more scientist with ideas similar to Watson began to experiment and develop radar governments around the world began to take an interest in the new concept of radar. It was not until however World War 2 that development was fast tracked and somewhat finalized. Before World War 2, only a handful of countries dabbled with radar. Once the war broke out all of that changed.