In today’s semiconductor-driven world, it’s easy to forget just how essential vacuum tubes were to electronics—and everyday life—during the middle decades of the 20th century. How essential? Well, it’s no exaggeration to say that one particular type of tube played a crucial role in saving Western civilization.
During the early days of World War II, German U-boats ruled the North Atlantic, attacking and sinking ships almost at will. The British had a new technology, called RADAR (RAdio Detection And Ranging), that could spot U-boats lurking in the waves. But they couldn’t make the hardware small and light enough to use in fighter planes. Fortunately for the British, and posterity, Sigurd and Russell Varian had a solution.
Unique Individuals
The Irish-American Varian brothers, who grew up in Palo Alto and Halcyon (near San Luis Obispo), California, were a decidedly unmatched set. The elder Russell (1898-1959) was dyslexic at the time when the condition was little understood, meaning that most of the people close to him thought he was either “slow” or downright stupid.
Yet while Russell was a slow learner, he wasn’t unintelligent. More than anything else, he was a hard worker. It was through sheer force of will that he managed to graduate from Stanford with BS and MS degrees in physics.
The younger brother, Sigurd (1901-1961), was gregarious, inventive, and adventuresome. Most of all, he was too impatient to spend countless hours in classrooms and study halls working toward a degree. Sigurd attended California Polytechnic for a time, but dropped out to tinker on cars, experiment with airplanes, and take flying lessons. He never earned a college degree.
Despite their differences, the brothers were close and very focused on advancing their respective careers. Russell found employment in San Francisco with television pioneer Philo Farnsworth. Sigurd, meanwhile, began a career in aviation that included barnstorming and, eventually, a job as a Pam Am pilot, blazing new routes into Mexico and South America.
War Clouds
By the mid-1930s Sigurd, like millions of people worldwide, was becoming increasingly alarmed by German acts of unprovoked aggression in Spain and elsewhere. “He felt that Hitler could easily establish bases in Central America, from which his planes could fly into the United States at night, or at low elevations, and drop bombs, without ever being detected,” recalled Ed Ginzton, who worked closely with both brothers, in a 1990 interview republished in the book The Tube Guys, by Norman H. Pond (2008, Russ Cochran).
Sigurd felt that he and his brother could do something to help counter the growing threat. While discussing the gloomy situation in Europe with Russell, he proposed that they jointly develop a radio-based technology that could detect airplanes at night or in clouds. Russell agreed, and they immediately began developing a plan, innocent of the fact that British engineers were already developing the top-secret RADAR technology.
The brothers quit their jobs and moved back home to Halcyon. Once there, relying on Russell’s theoretical and technical knowledge, and Sigurd’s mechanical abilities, they began developing plans for a device that could detect a signal bounced off of an airplane several miles away.
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