IBM microwave applicationearly data communications 2823

Anne & Lynn Wheeler

The 1944 specs (as published by the NYT) were:

"Each channel would be 20 megacycles wide, twenty times as wide as the whole broadcast program spectrum of the country, located between 2,000 and 2,300 megacycles in the very high frequencies where no regular service has ever operated before."

"Each radio highway three times the width of an ordinary television wave and 2,000 times as wide as a broadcast program channel".

"Two way television signals may be sent each way at once, but if the video programs be limited to one each way, each could be high quality color show sent from NY to DC and DC to NY at the same time."

"North America some day may be crisscrossed by bands or beams of directed radio energy relayed hundreds of miles on wide channels, each beam capable of carrying a variety of radio programs or industrial services simultaneously."

--New York Times, 8-13-1944.

I'm surprised this was being done during the war. Usually anything projects like this during the war years had to have something to do with helping the war effort; nothing in this article referred to defense needs. Indeed, for a number of years after WW II, many projects used "Defense" in their breastle to add importance to them, such as the Interstate Highway system and IBM's 701 computer, the "Defense Calculator".