Oral-History:Milton Kant
About Milton Kant
Milton Kant received his electrical engineering degree from the City College of New York in 1947, after skipping several grades during childhood and after serving in the Navy's Eddy program for two years during World War II. In his subsequent work as an engineer, Kant developed and tested military equipment, applying RFI and EMC technologies. In 1957, Kant was a co-founder of the IRE Professional Group on Radio Frequency Interference.
This interview details Kant's educational and military careers. Kant then traces his employment, describing his work at the Civil Aeronautics Administration (1948-1950), the U.S. Air Force Rome Air Development Center (1950-1954), Sperry Gyroscope Co. (1954-1967), the Sperry Systems Management Division (1967-1970), the RCA Corporation (1970-1991), and Techmatics, Inc. (consulting work beginning in 1992). Kant details his work at RCA on combat system design and integration, including development of the AEGIS Combat System and of topside design. Kant describes the emergence of the RFI field in the 1950s, detailing the creation and growth of the IRE Professional Group on Radio Frequency Interference. Kant also describes his own participation in the IRE, including numerous committee activities and chair positions.
About the Interview
MILTON KANT: An Interview Conducted by Fredrik Nebeker, IEEE History Center, 3 August 2004
Interview #448 for the IEEE History Center, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
Copyright Statement
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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
Milton Kant, an oral history conducted in 2004 by Fredrik Nebeker, IEEE History Center, Piscataway, NJ, USA.
Interview
INTERVIEW: Milton Kant
INTERVIEWER: Rik Nebeker
DATE: 3 August 2004
PLACE: Cherry Hill, New Jersey
Childhood, family, and education
Nebeker:
Let's start with where and when you were born and a little about your family.
Kant:
My birthday is November 8th, 1925. I was born in New York City and was brought up mostly in the Bronx, New York.
Nebeker:
What did your father do?
Kant:
My father, starting just about right after I was born, was a bike carrier for the Postal Service. He was also a veteran of World War I. He had a very interesting career too, but I don't want to start in with that now. As a veteran it was easier for him to get a job in the government. He got that job because after I was born he was looking for a secure type of job. He was very lucky because he had that job during the Depression. He didn't make a fortune, but at least it was a steady job.
Nebeker:
You lived in the Bronx during those years?
Kant:
Yes, I lived in the Bronx.
Nebeker:
Was your mother a housewife?
Kant:
My mother was a housewife most of the time. After her kids grew up she went back to work.
Nebeker:
Did you have brothers and sisters?
Kant:
Yes, I have one brother. He worked for NASA most of his life. He's three years younger than I so he's about seventy-six years old. He is still actively working with NASA doing open-ended type of consulting for them mostly on their atmospheric satellites and the Earth—
Nebeker:
The environmental satellites?
Kant:
An Earth characteristic thing.
Nebeker:
Monitoring the Earth?
Kant:
Yes.
Nebeker:
Did you have an interest in science and technological things as a child?
Kant:
Yes. I used to take apart radios and telephones and things like that. We lived in an apartment house in the Bronx in a pretty large apartment complex. I used to hang out there and eventually found a few other people who were interested in some of the same things in which I was interested, but it really was not that much.
Nebeker:
When you were going to high school was it clear that science was of interest?
Kant:
Yes, I was pretty much decided on being an engineer even during high school. I went to high school pretty young also.
Nebeker:
How did that happen?
Kant:
The public school I went to had a policy of skipping children, so I skipped a number of times.
Nebeker:
Is that right?
Kant:
The reason for that was because the assistant principal in charge of the school had to keep the population of the school below 750 students. Otherwise they would put in a regular principal and he was not qualified for that. Therefore he wanted to keep the school population down. He skipped a number of children – enough to move them out fast enough that the population didn't get too high. This was the story I heard. I can't vouch for it.
Nebeker:
Was it difficult for you being younger than most of the kids in high school?
Kant:
Yes, it was, in both high school and college. I sort of regret it now. In fact I never let my children skip a grade. I felt that I was not really mature enough socially to really get the full benefits of high school and college.
Nebeker:
You must have done all right in high school.
Kant:
Yes. I went to Townsend Harris High School in New York, which was at that time called the Preparatory School for City College of New York. It was a three-year high school, so I skipped even more time in there.
Nebeker:
My goodness.
Engineering studies, City College
Kant:
I think I started college at fifteen. I don't think it was a good idea. I really wasn't mature enough to handle everything there and take full advantage of it.
Nebeker:
What year did you start at City College?
Kant:
In 1940.
Nebeker:
Did you already know that you wanted to go into engineering?
Kant:
Oh yes. I had to declare that at the beginning because some of the technical courses were different depending on whether one was going into the engineering school or the science school – especially physics and math. Even some of the language courses were slanted toward engineering. They had technical French and things like that.
Nebeker:
I see.
Kant:
Those were the courses one took even before taking the engineering courses.
Nebeker:
How was your education at City College?
Kant:
What do you mean?
Nebeker:
Did you feel that you were trained well?
Kant:
Yes. For that time I guess it was pretty good. They had some good teachers there.
Kant:
My education there was interrupted by service in the Navy.
Nebeker:
When you started you were fifteen years old, which of course is too young.
Kant:
Right, but I went into the Navy when I just a little over eighteen.
Nebeker:
Was that voluntary or had the draft started?
Kant:
I was drafted, but I didn't fight it and didn't ask for a deferment.
Nebeker:
You joined the Navy?
Kant:
I don't remember exactly how it came about, but before I was drafted I think they asked me if I was interested in taking what they called the Eddy test. That was what they used to get people into the Eddy program in the Navy.
Nebeker:
It that spelled Eddy?
Kant:
Yes. It is named after a captain in the Navy who set up these schools. There was a whole series of schools.
Nebeker:
For electronic technicians?
Kant:
Yes. I think at that time it was radio technicians, but by the end of the war it was also for electronic technicians.
Nebeker:
I'm sure, with all the radar and sonar and the other systems.
Kant:
That's right. It was divided into pre-radio, primary and secondary schools. I think pre-radio was something they were using as a sort of second filter. To get into the program one had to pass the Eddy test, which was sort of an intelligence test.
Nebeker:
It was not specific to engineering?
Kant:
No, because a lot of the people did not have any kind of electronic background.
Nebeker:
They wanted to see if you had an aptitude for that?
Kant:
Correct. Then they sent people to this pre-radio school where they started teaching some of the technical math and physics. I didn't go to pre-radio. I skipped that. The boot camp time for people who were enlisted and accepted for the Eddy test was shorter. The normal boot camp was something like ten or twelve weeks I think, and the boot camp for people in the Eddy program was something like five or six weeks.
Nebeker:
Was the Eddy program entirely Navy?
Kant:
It was strictly for Navy and Marines. The pre-radio schools were mostly in the Chicago area. They had a number of them around and some of them were in Chicago public schools or high schools. The Navy took them over to use for these pre-radio schools. The primary schools were around the country. The one I went to was in Chicago. It was in a TV studio. I think it was WBKB.
Nebeker:
A very early TV studio.
Kant:
Yes, that's right. Eddy was involved in that also.
Nebeker:
The Navy was using television?
Kant:
The Navy was not using television. I think that was commercial and Captain Eddy was involved in that, but he was also Navy Captain. The school in Chicago was at 190 North State Street, which was the Balaban and Katz Theater and was also their TV station. He used those premises or some adjoining premises to set up the classrooms and labs. There were other locations across the country.
Nebeker:
Did you skip the pre-radio because of the courses you had taken at City College?
Kant:
That was part of it. The starting primary class at 190 North State was looking for a couple of people to fill in some vacancies. I am not sure how they chose them, but I think they took the ones who made some of the highest marks on the tests. Two of us that went in there to fill those vacancies. We were chosen to skip the pre-radio and go straight there.
Nebeker:
You have quite a history of accelerated education.
Kant:
I don't know if it did me any good, but yes. I was in Chicago for three months at the primary school. It was basic electronics and some practical training. They taught soldering for instance. It was both practical and theoretical. There were four secondary schools. One was at the Chicago Navy Pier and the three others were in Washington, San Francisco and Corpus Christi. The one in Corpus Christi was for airborne electronics. Another was for submarine electronics and another was for shipboard electronics. I think they had two for shipboard electronics. I ended up in Corpus Christi, which was the airborne school.
Nebeker:
How long did that last?
Kant:
I think that was a 28-week course, six or seven months. The whole Eddy program was about a year. The primary was about three months, this was about seven months and pre-radio was probably about one month. There was also a one- or two-week break between some of them. By the time I got out of the Eddy school was in '45 just around V-Day and the war was practically over. After that I was sent to Patuxent Naval Station, which was an electronics laboratory. That was where the Navy tested a lot of the electronic equipment before it was sent to the fleet. They got the first model or development model and put it in a plane and checked it out. I was a technician there. We were mostly responsible for some of the installation work, setting up equipment on test benches and actually running the tests. I was checking out some of the early electronic bombing systems.
Nebeker:
The radar bombing systems?
Kant:
The radar bombing systems, yes. They had a range in the Chesapeake Bay outside of Patuxent. The bombing system was set up in the plane so that the radar operator could put in corrections for the direction in speed of the plane while he was tracking the target on the radar. A computer would drop the bomb at the right time depending on speed and all that. They did a lot of that practice bombing to try to figure out how good the site was for radar bombing.
Nebeker:
Sure.
Kant:
That lasted for about a year until I was discharged from the Navy.
Nebeker:
You were in the Navy for about two years?
Kant:
Right.
Nebeker:
Then you went back to City College right away?
Kant:
Yes. I graduated in 1947. It was about a year short of a degree. They gave me some credit for some of the stuff I did in the Navy such as the electronic technician course there. The electronic technician course not only trained enlisted men but officers as well.
Nebeker:
Such as communications officers?
Kant:
Communications officers and radar officers too who would be in charge of the radars on the ships. They went through the same primary program. I don't remember if there were many officers in the same secondary schools as the enlisted men took. They also sent in some of the chiefs and whatnot who were old-time Navy men who were radio men for instance that to train them as radio technicians.
Nebeker:
That sounds like a pretty good training you received in those two years.
Kant:
Yes. The radar was pretty new at the time, and we worked on the airborne radars there, which were pretty advanced.
Nebeker:
That was ahead of what you could get in any college or university at the time.
Kant:
Yes.
Employment search
Nebeker:
What happened when you completed your degree? Was it easy to get a job?
Kant:
No, it was not too easy. At that time I was looking mostly for a government job. I applied for quite a few government jobs.
Nebeker:
Did you see yourself at the time as a radio engineer?
Kant:
Pretty much, yes. Not a power engineer.
Nebeker:
Were you interested in any sort of radio work?
Kant:
Yes. I don't know if they differentiated it too much, but at that time one ended up pretty much either as a power or radio major.
Nebeker:
Right.
Kant:
I had taken some power courses, but the courses were slanted more toward radio and I saw myself as a radio engineer – although my first job was in power engineering.
Nebeker:
How did that happen?
Kant:
I was getting a little desperate at the time, and one of the first offers I got was from the Bureau of Reclamation in Denver. After much trepidation I accepted that job, which meant moving out to Denver. That job involved strictly power, designing some of their substations. The Bureau of Reclamation ran a lot of the dams and power network out in the West. That only lasted for three or four months. When I got another offer back East in the radio line, I took that.
Nebeker:
Had you continued to apply for other jobs?
Kant:
I had applied to those before, but it took them that long to process them and get to a point where I was on the list and was accepted for a job.
Civil Aeronautics Administration, VOR systems
Nebeker:
I see. You were probably quite relieved to get a job both in radio and on the East coast.
Kant:
That's right.
Nebeker:
And what was that job?
Kant:
That was the CAA. That is the first job listed in my CV I think.
Nebeker:
Yes, that's listed here. The Civil Aeronautics Administration.
Kant:
Right, which is now of course the FAA.
Nebeker:
What was your job there?
Kant:
I started out with installing civil aviation facilities. They called them air navigation facilities.
Nebeker:
Where were you working?
Kant:
I was working in the northeast. They had regions in the country. I have forgotten the number of the region, but it was the region covering from Maine to Virginia and out to West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Nebeker:
Did you travel?
Kant:
Yes. I traveled continuously from airport to airport. I started out doing what they called VOR, which was the air navigation aid. I think it is still in use now. After the war there was a lot of money put into a big campaign to install VORs all over the country. They were being set up as the main navigation aid for the airlines. I don't know if you are familiar with navigation aids, but before that they used to have what they called LF ranges which operated on the LF band. It was a pretty much a fixed course from range to range.
Nebeker:
It was equipment in the plane that would indicate whether the course was on beam?
Kant:
It distinguished whether the plane was on course or off course and that was all. The course was a range. With the VOR and later with a DME combined – DME was distance measuring and they set it up together – it gave the angle from the station and the distance. With information from those two, a course could be plotted for any destination. They used that as a navigation aide for all the airlines once they got them all installed.
Nebeker:
Your job was installing these VOR systems?
Kant:
Yes. Contractor made the equipment. Installing them was not quite cut and dry because the phasing of the lines to feed the antennas was a factor. That had to be correct or the angles would not come out right. After they were installed they were tested by the CAA with their own aircraft to make sure of that. That was checked out using as an optical check. The plane would fly around the station and you would indicate the angles at which you saw them in a transit or something and that would be compared to the electrical angles that were received.
Nebeker:
Was it a difficult job to get these systems working?
Kant:
It was not too difficult, but one had to have a pretty good knowledge of what one was doing there. A different crew did the actual physical installation of the equipment. We did just the final installation and check of the stations.
Nebeker:
I see.
Kant:
Building the building and putting in the equipment and setting it in place and all was done by different crews. I think the construction was subcontracted. These were not necessarily near airports. The range of a station was maybe 100 miles or so on each side. Therefore they had to have these stations a couple hundred miles long.
Nebeker:
Was this the CAA that was actually building the stations?
Kant:
The CAA was the one who was responsible for doing it. Some of the work was contracted out. The CAA did the actual physical installation and the commissioning of the stations to get them certified as air navigation facilities.
Nebeker:
I see. You had that job for about two years. How did you feel about that job?
Kant:
Yes. After a while I got a little tired of it. After a while it wasn't really very interesting work. After some time there I was also doing design of installations at a lot of the airports – the control tower installations, air navigation facilities and
some of their stations – I've forgotten what they call them, the places where they have all the radars now.
Nebeker:
Air traffic control?
Kant:
Yes. Air traffic control stations which were in charge of plotting the courses of the planes. I designed installations for the electronic stuff there.
Nebeker:
For keeping track of all the aircraft in the region.
Kant:
Yes. That involved putting in communications and radios at the control towers. I think they were starting to put in some of the radars then, but that came after. Most of it was done by voice at the time, so they had all kinds of voice and telephone networks. The CAA interfaced through the telephone company for a lot of their communications. They did that kind of interfacing in addition to the receivers and transmitters that were at the airports or at remote stations near the airports. All of these things had to be designed and installed.
Nebeker:
It sounds like you continued to get training in a range of different electronic systems.
Kant:
Yes. Well, that's right.
Rome Air Development Center, U.S. Air Force
Nebeker:
Where did you go to after the two years at CAA? Your CV lists the Rome Air Development Center of the U.S. Air Force.
Kant:
Right. The promotion ladder at the CAA was not very open. Some of the people in the higher positions had been there for a while and seemed like they were going to be there for a while longer, so the promotional opportunities didn't look that great. I started looking around at other agencies with more possibility of promotion. Before it was in Rome, the Air Force was part of the Signal Corps – during World War II.
Nebeker:
It was still part of the Army.
Kant:
Yes. They didn't get separated until after the end of the war. As part of that separation the Signal Corps had its lab in Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey.
Nebeker:
Sure. I am familiar with that.
Kant:
The Air Force Lab was part of that lab there. Watson Laboratory is part of the Ft. Monmouth lab. It was starting to disengage itself and they were moving this lab up to Rome, New York. When I finally got the job there they were still in New Jersey, so I worked in New Jersey for a few months. I knew they were going to move, because they told me. It was not a surprise or anything. When they moved up to Rome they were just setting up the facilities.
Nebeker:
Were these mainly civilians?
Kant:
Yes. The labs were staffed almost entirely with civilians although at times there were officers in charge of some of the labs and in charge of the whole development center there. They also had a civilian chief engineer and an equivalent job for the technical engineer.
Nebeker:
The vast majority of people working there were civilians.
Kant:
Yes. Nearly all the people working there were civilians.
Nebeker:
You were working on automatic performance monitoring?
Kant:
Yes. Rome's mission was ground electronics for the Air Force. They were responsible for a lot, but not everything. That was a time when the Air Force was developing continental radar systems for defenses.
Nebeker:
Like early warning?
Kant:
Yes, early warning defenses. A lot of the radar portion that was done at Lincoln Lab at MIT, but most of the other ground systems were developed at Rome. Rome also had a mission for developing all the test equipment the Air Force needed for their systems. The laboratory doing that was called something like the General Equipment Laboratory. That was for test equipment and other functions. It was a laboratory with sort of a miscellaneous jobs compared to the other labs there which were devoted specifically to navigation systems and radar systems.
Nebeker:
This was more the test lab.
Kant:
Yes. I think they did things like environmental testing there also. I ended up in the test equipment group there, which was divided into two parts. One part was for the more conventional test equipment. They were doing a lot of stuff with the power meters.
Nebeker:
This was for communications and radar equipment?
Kant:
Yes. They also sponsored a lot of development work. One of their main functions was developing the equipment and bringing it to where it was ready for production. It was really a development lab. They did some of it in-house, but a lot of it was contract work. We would contract monitors and technical administrators for the contracts. The test equipment was done by contract by companies that specialized in doing that kind of work for the Air Force. The other branch was devoted to automatic testing. It was called built-in test equipment. This was where the function was to try to develop techniques and equipment to build into systems for monitoring the system performance. At that time that was somewhat of a newer concept.
Nebeker:
Was the idea that this equipment would always be monitored?
Kant:
Yes. It was continuously monitoring the performance of the system. It would supposedly be able to tell you if the equipment was operating normally. For radar sometimes it was hard to tell, because if no targets could be seen one could not be sure whether or not the system was operating.
Nebeker:
Right.
Kant:
They were looking for some way to make sure that the whole system was operating and nothing in the system was degraded. A degraded system might see maybe some targets but not the full capability of the system. We had out contracts for developing equipment to build into the radar systems to monitor performance. These were usually let out to universities for development.
Nebeker:
Did this prove to be useful that such systems were built?
Kant:
Eventually it became standard practice to build in this equipment in the system, but the idea at that time maybe more to put out the concept before trying to make it part of the system. To have it built in, it really has to be made a system requirement when letting the contractor develop the system.
Nebeker:
Yes.
Kant:
Unless ways of doing that could be demonstrated to the contractors it wasn't very meaningful to try to make someone do that unless they already knew how to do it.
Nebeker:
You had to prove this concept.
Kant:
That's right.
Nebeker:
And it went well then in that group?
Kant:
As far as I was involved, yes. I was only there for four years. We ended up trying to take one of the radars that the Air Force had developed before and add on some of the stuff as a demonstration model so that this could be built into the system. Of course that wasn't the best way of doing it, but that's what we were trying to do for demonstration purposes. Another part of the work at that time involved reliability.
Kant:
Trying to improve the reliability of equipment was a concept that was coming into fashion at that time. I don't remember exactly how, but we got involved in that. We ended up contracting for a reliability handbook with a publisher who then prepared the handbook.
Nebeker:
Was this for techniques for improving the reliability of equipment?
Kant:
Yes. I realized later that a lot of lack of reliability was due to a lot of the equipment was being developed by engineers who were only interested in showing a concept and developing circuitry and whatnot to perform a function.
Nebeker:
To do a particular job. Yes.
Kant:
But when it came to the military using that equipment in the field the requirements were much more stringent than just having operating circuitries and things like that. As far as packaging and environmental requirements—.
Nebeker:
Operating under all kinds of conditions.
Kant:
Yes. A wide environment. Therefore a lot of times this ended up being sort of like an add-on – which really wasn't the way to go. We were trying to do all these things and develop concepts the development engineers could use when they developed equipment. That was the idea for the reliability and other factors. This was true with EMC also.
Nebeker:
It was an afterthought.
Kant:
Yes. There were requirements which the development engineers really didn't consider when they were doing the development and which when they tried to pass the RFI test at that time they couldn't pass and had to try to put fixes into the equipment to make it pass. The concept was the same in a lot of these in auxiliary things, everything involved in using the equipment except for the basic functioning of the equipment. The considerations regarding environment, EMC, reliability all were coined by RCA as system disciplines – all the other things that needed to be done to make the equipment work properly under all the requirements in the field besides just the basic functions.
Nebeker:
Did you get at all involved with RFI at Rome?
Kant:
No, not really. However the RFI group was in the same lab that we were.
Nebeker:
You knew about that.
Kant:
Oh yes. There were four or five different sections there. The sections were RFI, environmental, electronic test equipment or automatic test equipment, and I don't know whether or not they had a reliability group before that. These were all part of the same General Equipment Lab at the time. I think that's what they called it. The guy in charge of the RFI section was one of the section heads in that same lab. They were right next door to us.
Nebeker:
How did you feel in general about your four years at the Rome Development Center?
Kant:
They were very interesting.
Nebeker:
Did you like the work?
Kant:
Yes.
Nebeker:
Did you see a future in it?
Kant:
Yes.
Nebeker:
Why did you leave?
Kant:
I got married while I was there. My wife came from New York, and she wasn't very happy in Rome. It was really a personal decision. We had our first child up there. She didn't want to stay there, so I was pushed to look for work back in the New York area.
Sperry
Electrical measurements lab
Nebeker:
Okay. Then you found work at Sperry.
Kant:
Right.
Nebeker:
How did that come about and what did you do there?
Kant:
I sent down a number of applications for companies in New York. I interviewed at Sperry and they hired me. The chief at the Air Force lab was very unhappy to lose me. They had trouble getting people there and I was a section head at the time. I explained that this was a personal problem.
Nebeker:
What did you start on at Sperry?
Kant:
At Sperry I was in the electrical measurements lab. I had the job of doing all the electro measurements and calibration work. They were trying to set up the trail of certification of electronic equipment through the NBS and all that kind of thing. That was just starting at that time. The lab there at Sperry in Great Neck, New York maintained the standards. They spent development money for development of the equipment and facilities to do that. They had three groups at the lab: d.c. and low frequency, RF and microwave. They were divided according to frequency ranges. I ended up in the RF group. A good part of the job of the RF group was the RFI measurements, qualifying equipment for the military RFI specs.
Nebeker:
Was this mainly military equipment?
Kant:
Sperry's work was almost strictly for the military – mostly Navy and Air Force but some Army as well. There may have been some commercial work, but it was a very small portion of it.
RFI
Nebeker:
Is that how you got into RFI?
Kant:
Yes. That's how I ended up in there.
Nebeker:
You started there in 1954.
Kant:
Yes.
Nebeker:
You must have gotten into it early, because in '57 you were a cofounder of the RFI professional group.
Kant:
Yes, that's right. At that time the RFI business was pretty fragmented, and each service had its own ideas of how to test and qualify equipment for RFI. They had their own specs also.
Nebeker:
I see. If Sperry produced something for the Air Force and the Navy they would have to go through different test procedures for each service?
Kant:
Somewhat different, yes. I'm not sure if each service agreed on what test equipment should be used to run the tests. It was fragmented. There was not much information available about a lot of the qualifying techniques being used at the time – shielding techniques, shielding measurements and their effectiveness or check-out. We spent a lot of time, effort and development money trying to run tests on the effectiveness of a lot of these things such as shielding gaskets, different types of air filters and components which were used in the equipment. We were trying to find out which ones were effective. RFI testing at that time also involved shielded rooms. To run the tests a quiet environment was needed, and that was achieved by shielding. That was very unscientific, because testing in a shielded room is not a very precise way of doing tests – as we found out. The specs did not take any of that into account. I think one of the reasons they hired me at Sperry is because they were looking for somebody to be in charge of the RF group. A cofounder, Harold Schwank, was working there before but I don't know if they really wanted to make him a section head or first level manager. I think that was one of the reasons they hired me was because I had management experience in the Air Force. They didn't put me in management right away. It was a number of years before they promoted me. I was actually in charge of that group, though not as a manager, right away.
RFI groups and symposia
Nebeker:
Getting to the founding of the Society, you were telling me about the situation in the mid-1950s.
Kant:
When I came in there and saw the situation, one of the main sources of information they had in the area of RFI was a conference the Signal Corps sponsored at Armor Research Foundation – which is now the Illinois Institute of Technology Research (IIT).
Nebeker:
Right.
Kant:
The Signal Corps contracted Armor to run that symposium. I think it started in the early 1950s. I think 1954 or 1955 was the third annual symposium. I went to the 1955 and 1956 symposiums. They were held in Chicago. That's where most of the people in RFI – especially those involved in the military work – were gathered. That's where the papers were presented based on a lot of the research that was going on then.
Nebeker:
That was the main way to learn about efforts going on elsewhere?
Kant:
At that time. Right. People gathered and there were a lot of discussions. I don't remember if they had many contractors there.
Nebeker:
Did all these people have security clearances? Did you feel you could talk openly about your work?
Kant:
Most of that was unclassified. I am trying to remember whether they had any classified sessions there. I think there were a few classified sessions, because I think some of the facilities at which they had them had to be cleared.
Nebeker:
But in general people could talk openly.
Kant:
In general yes. I do not remember any commercial exhibits or anything like that. A lot of the attendees were in the commercial part of the business, such as screen room filter manufacturers, gasket people and people who made RFI components.
Nebeker:
I would guess that whole business had really gotten going during the war. Is that right?
Kant:
Well, it started during the war.
Nebeker:
There was some earlier work.
Kant:
Yes. It was in existence during the war but I would say it wasn't really at a high level as far as I could tell. There were military specs even during the war, but it seems to me that they weren't enforced very much. It seemed to be easy to get by them.
Nebeker:
And of course as more and more electronics get put on the ships and planes and so on it is more and more prominent.
Kant:
- Audio File
- MP3 Audio
(448 - kant - clip 1.mp3)
Yes. During that time they were getting stricter in the enforcement. It was all sort of accumulating to a point where it became clearly inefficient to have different procedures and different specs for the different services. This was especially evident at Sperry where we were working for different services. That was one of the driving forces. Another force was the need to get good information about the effectiveness of a lot of these products. The spec for testing filters was sort of artificial in that they had a standardized setup that would assess it but did not necessarily conform to the way it was actually used in practice. Most of the testing was standardized but did not necessarily reflect the effectiveness of the item in the actual test. There was also a controversy about [how] to test other pieces – gases and whatnot. There was a lot of uncertainty regarding a lot of these things. In addition, getting information about how to do shielding testing and things like that – even the theory of shielding testing and grounding and all that – was difficult. If you go back to the school, when they considered a lot of these problems and attempted a design or anything like that they would always use an ideal situation or condition – a theoretically perfect ground, theoretically perfect capacitors and all that kind of thing. One found out in practice that this was not the case. Therefore, in RFI the idea really came down to taking the actual performance of the characteristics in the circuitry and using that instead of having ideal situations. There is a finite resistance on the ground. Capacitors are not perfect; they end up with resonances and impedances in them. Metal is not the perfect shield. All of these things were the practical aspects of engineering that were ignored in school.
Nebeker:
I see.
Kant:
However people who were investigating that because even during World War II aperture theory and things like that developed for microwave use and all that. A lot of that was somewhat applicable to interference in testing for shielding, grounding and other things like that.
Nebeker:
The annual symposium – is that what it was called, the symposium that was sponsored by the Armor Institute?
Kant:
Yes.
Nebeker:
Were those people more on the manufacturing side? Were there also a lot of university people?
Kant:
There was a good cross section. University people did a lot of the presentations because they were doing a lot of the research in shielding and test equipment type and development, and how to run tests and things like that. There was a cross section.
Nebeker:
There was a good collaboration with the university researchers?
Kant:
Through mutual interests I would say. At Sperry we were more the users of the information. We were looking for ways of getting information we could apply to our work. We also felt some resentment or unhappiness at Sperry because the Armor symposium was sponsored by the Signal Corps. Other interests, even other military interests, did not have too much of a say in how it was run and everything like that. There was some of that involved also. I think it was at the 1956 conference that there were discussions about forming some sort national group. In fact there was already a group being formed out on the west coast called something like the Radio Technical Committee. Rick Daniels, one of the consultants had been publishing a newsletter called something like Quasis and Peaks. His newsletter tried to cover a lot of the information in the field.
Nebeker:
Is that one of the few publications there was at the time in the field?
Kant:
Yes. That's right.
IRE Professional Group on RFI
Nebeker:
Were you already a member of the Institute of Radio Engineers?
Kant:
Oh yes. I joined around 1947 while I still a student. I became an associate member in 1948 I think. This is getting a little ahead, but at the 1956 conference there was a lot of discussion about forming a national group, but not too much came of that at that time. When we got back there was still a lot of talk about that and at some point along the line between then and early 1957 we tried to get something firmer going. In the beginning of 1957 Howard Schwank and I sent out a letter. He was probably better known than I. He had been in the field longer. He knew a lot more people than I did, but I was getting involved in it also so we sent out a letter jointly to a number of people – primarily to people up and down the east coast – calling a meeting with the object of trying to form some sort of group in the EMI field.
Nebeker:
From the beginning was it thought that this would be within the IRE?
Kant:
Not necessarily, because the group on the west coast was not in the IRE at the time. They were an independent group. That was big question whether it should be an independent group or an IRE professional group. I felt the IRE was probably the most appropriate place for it. I thought it would be more acceptable technically and prestigious than just being a separate technical committee.
Nebeker:
Was Schwank a member of IRE?
Kant:
I think so, yes.
Nebeker:
What kind of response did you get from your letter?
Kant:
I don't have the list of those to whom we sent it out to – at least I haven't found it yet – but I remember it was especially people who were at the Armor conference plus those with whom we had come in contact as subprograms of filters, fielding equipment, gaskets, shield rooms and so on. I don't recall how many people there were on that list but it was quite a few. It was sent out pretty widely. We got quite a few responses and most of them are here.
Nebeker:
It's very nice that you've kept this over the years.
Kant:
I'm a saver. The letter was sent out in March of 1957.
Nebeker:
Was the initial idea that this would be sort of an east coast equivalent of that independent west coast group?
Kant:
Possibly, yes. The meeting was called for April 10th.
Nebeker:
I see.
Kant:
It was at the Brooklyn Memorial Building in New York City. They had meeting rooms there. That was the only reason we went there.
Nebeker:
How many people came to the meeting?
Kant:
Sixty. [ed. note: later in this interview this number was found to be sixty though on the tape at this point he says twenty or thirty]
Nebeker:
Do you still remember that meeting?
Kant:
Oh, yes. Some of the replies we got came from military people in the Signal Corps and Navy, and some were from people in the business – filter manufacturers, consultants, IBM, RCA, Hazeltine and so forth.
Nebeker:
What about university people? Did you get replies from some of them as well?
Kant:
Yes. Ralph Showers attended the meeting.
Nebeker:
I know the name.
Kant:
There was a good scattering of people. Some couldn't come and some could. Most of these were people up and down the coast from Washington to Weston.
Nebeker:
Who was it from the Hazeltine lab?
Kant:
That was a fellow named Bellow M. Parany.
Nebeker:
What was the outcome of the meeting?
Kant:
It was decided after some discussion that we would set up an organization committee.
Nebeker:
It looks like about eight people.
Kant:
Yes. I think it was decided at that time that we would try to form an IRE professional group, and we started corresponding with the IRE. In fact I think we also sent someone in IRE a letter even for that meeting.
Nebeker:
I see.
Kant:
Larry Cummings. I think he may have been there. I'm not sure if he was there or not.
Nebeker:
There was a very positive response and at the meeting it was decided to move ahead with it and an organizing committee was named. You were on this organizing committee I see.
Kant:
Yes.
Nebeker:
What was your task?
Kant:
My task was to find out how to go about becoming a professional group in the IRE. The IRE sent us some information about what it took to start a professional group. It involved a petition. I've forgotten how many signatures were needed, but whatever it was we finally ended up getting enough a little later on that year.
Nebeker:
It seems to me that this all moved fairly rapidly.
Kant:
Not really.
Nebeker:
The letter went out in March, the meeting was in April, and you had a professional group formed before the end of the year.
Kant:
That's right.
Nebeker:
That's impressive.
Kant:
Well yes, that's true. I have folders here with information about forming the chapter.
Nebeker:
It is very good that you have kept all these things. We can get the details of how the professional group got going with these documents. Right now it's more important to get your recollections.
Kant:
I don't recall the details of these things. Here I see that we needed only twenty-five persons to sign the petition.
Nebeker:
Okay.
Kant:
We had a meeting at the IRE Headquarters on May 2nd. Harold Schwank was the acting chairman of the group. Here are the minutes of the first board of directors meeting.
Nebeker:
Was this where the IRE approved the professional group?
Kant:
The field of interest is stated here and that members of the IRE formed the group. It tells when the meeting was held and gives the names of the members of the administrative committee.
Nebeker:
I see.
Kant:
And here is the petition. We sent out a number of these. Once the petitions came back then in the fall there was a meeting at the IRE and the IRE approved the formation of the group.
Nebeker:
IRE had aspirations of being an international organization although most members were in the United States.
Kant:
At that time I don't think it was one.
Nebeker:
Not much on outside the U.S.
Kant:
That's right.
Nebeker:
Is it true that this was more of an east coast organization?
Kant:
Not entirely. There were people here from Detroit, Chicago, Boulder and even Los Angeles.
Nebeker:
That was an advantage of doing it within the IRE that you got nationwide coverage.
Kant:
Yes.
Nebeker:
As I say, it's wonderful that you kept these things and the details of what went on in the organization of the Society. We can look up those details, but I'd like to hear from you how it went. There was a response to this letter and a group got formed. How did it go in the first few years just in general?
Kant:
One of the first things we wanted to do was hold a symposium or conference sponsored by the group.
Nebeker:
Rather than the Armor.
Kant:
This group was trying to get a broader interest that was beyond the Armor point of view. The Armor conference went on for a number of years, even together, until they finally stopped. Then the professional group became the primary sponsor of these types of symposiums.
Nebeker:
From the beginning there was the idea that you would have your own annual meeting.
Kant:
Yes.
Nebeker:
Did that come off in 1958? What was the first year of it?
Kant:
The first one was in 1959. That one was not too well organized. It was pretty much a learning experience.
Nebeker:
A learning experience about getting the people together?
Kant:
Getting the place to hold it, advertising it and to getting papers to be presented and all that kind of thing. That was pretty much a learning experience. Part of this time we also ended up having to come up with a constitution or bible for the group. The second national symposium was in Washington in 1960. We also wanted to get a newsletter going. That was a little easier because the fellow who was writing Quasis and Peaks on his own agreed to put out the newsletter for the group.
Nebeker:
Did he do that in place of the one he had been doing?
Kant:
Yes.
Nebeker:
Did that get started early?
Kant:
Yes. I put out the first and second editions but he agreed to do it very shortly thereafter.
Nebeker:
I see.
Kant:
That was the second thing, and the third thing was to start publishing a Transactions. That one came off pretty soon also. That may not have been until 1960 or so. I'm not sure of that date. It may have taken a little longer to actually get a Transactions going. That was a more formal type of operation.
Nebeker:
Right. At least by 1959 or 1960 you had the usual things a Society has such as the annual meeting and newsletter.
Kant:
And Transactions.
Nebeker:
A refereed Transactions publication.
Kant:
Yes.
Nebeker:
This must have met a need that was there.
Kant:
Definitely. There was a dedicated group of people who were working in this area though it was not a large group.
Nebeker:
Can you make some guess as to how many people would think of themselves in the late 1950s as being in RFI? Was it thought of as RFI at that time?
Kant:
Besides the actual initial members of group?
Nebeker:
Were there a few hundred altogether?
Kant:
I think more than that, probably approaching one or two thousand. Most of the companies doing this kind of work had some people involved in it. Most of them doing military work had people involved in it. There were the separate test labs – not to many, but there were some – and there were a lot of companies that made all these different kinds of instruments such as filters and shielding materials and so on.
Nebeker:
Do you remember the membership figures for the professional group in the early years? Was it on the order of a few hundred?
Kant:
Yes, I think it was in the hundreds. I have one of the mailing lists here.
Nebeker:
Is this some kind of an addressograph?
Kant:
Yes, this is a printout from the IRE. This is the mailing list for the group.
Nebeker:
This was probably one of these systems that had little plates.
Kant:
It may be. I don't know. We asked them for that, and that is what they gave us. It looks like it was at least two or three hundred at the very beginning.
Nebeker:
That's impressive.
Kant:
It grew gradually after that. I don't know what the current figures are, but I think probably somewhere around five or six thousand. It's a much bigger business now than it was. People in the FCC were in involved this too.
Nebeker:
The IRE professional group managed to serve all these people so that all types would come to the annual meeting.
Kant:
That's right.
Nebeker:
What was your involvement in the early years? You were on the organizing committee.
Kant:
I was a member of the administration committee for a while. I never ran for office in the professional group except for the administrative committee.
Nebeker:
You were on that for several years?
Kant:
Yes.
Nebeker:
You were also secretary of the administrative committee.
Kant:
Yes.
Nebeker:
And then you were chairman of the New York Long Island chapter.
Kant:
Yes. I was chairman of the symposium when it was held in New York.
Nebeker:
I see, the 1965 symposium.
Kant:
I was chairman of that symposium.
Nebeker:
Were you the main organizer for that?
Kant:
Yes.
Nebeker:
How did that go?
Kant:
I think it went very well. We had it in New York at that time was because the World's Fair was in New York in 1964 and 1965. This was in the second year of the World's Fair there. That was another attraction. I also started the information retrieval activity there, which I think they are still doing.
Nebeker:
What was that about?
Kant:
The story on that was to gather information about lesser-known articles and papers on RFI such as those published in smaller publications.
Nebeker:
Publications that were not in most libraries.
Kant:
Yes. We made up a little abstract card format that was printed in a separate publication for a while and then in the newsletter listing the title and author, a regular abstract card, for different articles that appeared anywhere really.
Nebeker:
I see. Because the articles would appear in such a wide variety of different places it was important to have that.
Kant:
That's right. The articles that appeared in the Transactions were perhaps much more pertinent to the field, but there were border applications or border areas that may have been of somewhat secondary interest which could appear in all kinds of places. For instance a lot of the phenomenon of equipment or radiation which aren't the basic purpose of the equipment that endied up talking about antenna side lobes or spurious emissions and all kinds of things. We tried to gather that and present that.
Nebeker:
The main thing was just to make known that there was an article in this place. Did you actually try to get copies?
Kant:
No. Even to this day they still print these abstracts in the newsletter, but they also say that they can't give you a copy of the article.
Nebeker:
That's too big a job to try to provide copies.
Kant:
Yes, right.
Nebeker:
I see. That was a particular concern and activity of yours with the Society?
Kant:
Yes. I was the one who initiated that, but there was a group of people who would contribute to these abstracts also.
Nebeker:
It says here you were chairman of this information retrieval committee from 1966 to 1975. Did it start in 1966?
Kant:
I don't remember exactly when we first published them. At one time we published these abstracts separately from the newsletter. I don't remember exactly when they started being published in the newsletter. It was sometime in that period. After I left other people took it over and kept it up and they eventually folded it into the newsletter as part of the newsletter.
Nebeker:
How did your work at Sperry go in these years?
Kant:
The work at Sperry was very varied. I did many different types of work there.
Nebeker:
You worked on a number of different systems, including navigation systems and radar systems.
Kant:
Yes. Sperry has a broad variety of equipment on which they worked – airborne, sonar, radar and so on. We worked on the RFI part trying to advise the system people to reduce interference during the design and also testing the systems. That also involved keeping up the facilities for running the tests and everything.
Nebeker:
The job there was to be sure that all the Sperry equipment met the specs of the different services as far as RFI?
Kant:
Yes.
Nebeker:
Did that work go well?
Kant:
Yes, I think it went pretty well. Sperry was busy, but after a while their business started falling off. Then they starting retrenching and eventually I went to work part-time on Polaris for submarine systems.
Sperry research groups; Polaris program
Nebeker:
What was your involvement with the Polaris program?
Kant:
I worked on some of the power supplies on some of the equipment there.
Nebeker:
The Polaris navigation subsystem.
Kant:
Yes. That didn't last for very long.
Nebeker:
You were with the EMI/EMC/EMX Engineering group from 1954 to 1967?
Kant:
Yes.
Nebeker:
And then from 1967 to 1970 you were in the Sperry Systems Management Division?
Kant:
Yes. There was more than just Polaris. There were a few other things in there, including some EMX engineering. It was sort of a combination. I also was working on the proposal section and things like that.
Nebeker:
Why did you eventually leave Sperry?
Kant:
They laid me off.
Nebeker:
In 1970 their business had fallen off to such an extent.
Kant:
They were starting to cut. I guess I was surplus at the time.
RCA; EMI engineering and AEGIS combat system
Nebeker:
In 1970 you went to RCA.
Kant:
Yes, right.
Nebeker:
You were again in EMI engineering and worked on the AEGIS combat system.
Kant:
Yes. RCA had what they called the system disciplines group. They had a lot of similar types of things there such as reliability, EMI, environmental testing and auxiliary or supplemental type of operations. There were other things there too. It varied. They kept reorganizing and shifting some of these things around. They had a mechanical design group too. At that time the involvement was mostly with the equipment that RCA was developing in the beginning of AEGIS. When I first started they were primarily developing the main radar for these systems. Most of the work involved testing, test plans program – the whole works that the military required at that time for EMI/EMC.
Military specifications, Aircraft Industries Association
Kant:
Let me go back to a little bit before that. I think I may have left something out. Not as far as the IRE goes, but involvement in the military specifications. As I mentioned before, a lot of the problem was that the services had separate specifications. We couldn't use the IRE to get a joint specification because the IRE wouldn't get involved in that kind of business, but the trade associations like the EIA or AIA – the electronic and aircraft industries – were more involved in that kind of work. I was on an AIA interference committee and we were pushing for the military to develop a single spec for RFI. There were groups and committees involved in trying to develop that spec together with the military. At that time, and I think it is still is true, the Navy was the lead service as far as the military spec for RFI went. It was their job to coordinate within the military to come up with a spec. A lot of work was done in the 1960s to accomplish that, and they finally did came up with a joint specification that I think is still in effect to this day. It's been changed – amended and updated and what-not – but at least they came up with a spec all the services used, even though they may have variations for each service in terms of the interference limits they could accept for their equipment. The main goal was to get them to use common test methods and test equipment.
Nebeker:
Then you wouldn't have to do completely separate tests for each service.
Kant:
That's right. They could approve test equipment that would be used for all the services.
Nebeker:
Were you on a committee that helped bring that about?
Kant:
Yes, as I say, through the AIA.
Nebeker:
Is that the Aircraft Industries Association?
Kant:
Yes, that is what they used to be called. I don't know what it is now. They were the industry association. There were other associations involved as well, but I think these were the main ones. They worked together with the services to develop and coordinate that.
Nebeker:
That sounds very important.
Kant:
That was something we knew we could not do through the IRE since the IRE would not get involved in that kind of operation, even though the IRE had its own standards and specs.
Nebeker:
Why wouldn't they get into that?
Kant:
Because it was military. Though there was not really any IRE involvement it was certainly related to the IRE.
RCA, AEGIS
Nebeker:
When you started with RCA was that in this geographical area?
Kant:
Yes.
Nebeker:
Did you move to Cherry Hill immediately?
Kant:
I started working here in 1970. My family didn't move until 1971. I was spending my weekends at home.
Nebeker:
After elevens years at RCA you were still in EMI/EMC/EMX engineering. Is that correct?
Kant:
Yes.
Nebeker:
Was working with AEGIS a large part of your work?
Kant:
My entire career at RCA was on AEGIS either on the equipment or on the system.
Nebeker:
I see.
Kant:
Somewhere along the line RCA became a combat system engineering agent for the AEGIS system. That meant that the Navy gave them the responsibility for integrating the whole system. That meant all the electronics on the ship. That included computers, communications equipment and everything, to put it together and make sure that when they got on the ship they would function together.
Nebeker:
So this was everything – the radar, sonar and communications?
Kant:
- Audio File
- MP3 Audio
(448 - kant - clip 2.mp3)
Yes. This was somewhat of a new concept for the Navy at the time. Before that they usually gave that responsibility to the shipbuilder. They told him, "We're going to give you all this equipment and you've got to put it all together on the ship." However since the systems were getting so complex and interrelated that, to their credit, they decided they would give one non-shipbuilding contractor the responsibility for tying everything together. The difference was that RCA was primarily interested in the radar portion of the ship. RCA was building the radar and was responsible for those elements. The other systems on the ship were, as far they were concerned, sort of secondary.
Nebeker:
The Navy wanted somebody to oversee all of the electronics.
Kant:
Yes. Particularly we ended up with what they call the topside design. The Navy did some of that before that, but it got to be the point where it was so complicated and at such a high EM environment on the top of the ship that it really could not be neglected. Additionally, for the location of the equipment on the topside consideration had to be taken as to whether or not it would interfere with the coverage of the radar and things like that. For instance, nothing could be placed in front of the antennas – not only the radar antennas, but all the antennas. Coverage of some of the armor – guns and whatnot – also had to be considered because some of the guns included radar as part of the gun.
Nebeker:
Yes.
Kant:
I don't know how familiar you are with some of these things.
Nebeker:
I'm not, but I have seen pictures of these Naval ships with antennas all over the place.
Kant:
Antennas and radomes and missile firing things.
Nebeker:
And they have communications systems and radar systems.
Kant:
They also have all the missiles on the ships. The AEGIS was so new that it really could not be compared to anything else. They had a problem even getting ships onto which it could be installed. The first systems went on cruisers in which the hulls were converted from an earlier class to take the AEGIS system, so there was not really a ship that was truly developed for the system. With the second class, the Destroyers, the ships were designed to accommodate AEGIS. It was much more of an integrated type of system there. The first set was more a kluge to put the system and everything else on there. The DDG 51 class, the Destroyer, was much more integrated and considered the whole system. As part of the combat system design they there was a topside design group.
Nebeker:
Why it is called topside design?
Kant:
They had to figure out where to put all the pieces that made up the combat system on the top of the ship.
Nebeker:
I see. Where to place all these things.
Kant:
Everything.
Nebeker:
Everything. Guns as well?
Kant:
Yes. Some things were sort of predetermined. The limitations were established and the big pieces could not be moved too much. The spy radar they had, had four faces and there had to be 360-degree coverage from these four faces. Therefore they had to be placed one for each quadrant pretty much. Then of course nothing could be put anything in front of them because it would distort the coverage. Then also they had a big missile launcher for what they called vertical launch. Missiles originally were launched off directives or launches that were pointed in the direction the missile was going. They would load up the missile and it would fire in the direction in which it was going. However that was not very efficient and they had to be reloaded, so they came up with this big missile canister arrangement that sat on the deck and from which a missile would be launched vertically.
Nebeker:
Regardless of where they were going they would all be launched vertically?
Kant:
The missile had to be made to accommodate that kind of a launch and the system had to be able to communicate with the missile to tell it where to go. The whole concept was that these ships were really for firing missiles. They had other systems on there besides communications. There was the close-in weapon system with Gatling gun type things that were radar-controlled and directed. Those had to be set on the ship. And there were all kinds of other things. The regular requirements of the ship itself from anchors and fences and guardrails also had to be taken into account and whether these would affect the coverage of the antennas. All these things had to be considered.
Nebeker:
That's interesting. Electromagnetic compatibility in a sense becomes so important that the entire design of the ship is affected.
Kant:
That's right. That's why we ended up as the ones doing a lot of the topside design.
Nebeker:
That's very interesting. That was a sort of broadening of the area of EMC for sure.
Kant:
Yes.
Nebeker:
What were the main challenges in placing all these different radar and communications systems? Did you have certain specs with every one of them?
Kant:
Yes. There were the coverage considerations, and we had to know the antenna and side lobe patterns. A lot of that was computing and figuring out how much energy from one system would get into other systems. Another part of it was to make sure about another requirement on the ship which was that it had to be shielded against EMP.
Nebeker:
That was a concern also?
Kant:
That was a concern. The ship is also supposed to have a low radar cross section.
Nebeker:
That was also a consideration.
Kant:
These considerations were all a part of topside design.
Nebeker:
My goodness.
Kant:
The sides of the Destroyer are all slanted. They actually ended up running actual tests to determine the radar cross section of these ships. They have a specification for that.
Nebeker:
Were there any surprises that you remember in integrating or putting everything on a ship? Were there any things that were not foreseen that caused major problems?
Kant:
We had to develop a concept early on, and we developed a concept that would utilize the ship's hull and superstructure as the shielding parts of the ship. That was to make sure that all the equipment inside the ship would be protected to a certain degree. In order to encompass that concept meant that any kind of entry point for cables or anything exposed to the topside had to be grounded where they penetrated the shield.
Nebeker:
Most of the electronics shielded within the hull or some part of the superstructure?
Kant:
Yes. Pretty much the only things that were exposed were the antennas. I think like in the CIWS there may have been some electronics. It was a self-contained system so that the whole pieces that were on it were in the topside. Even that was built so that the equipment was separated from the antenna and it was shielded inside the structure – even though the whole thing was one structure. There were a few situations like that. Another requirement was for radiation hazard. The radars put out a lot of power and the safety and the rad haz considerations of topside were another consideration. Not only from that from all the antennas really. That's how it broadened out. However EMC was one of the most important parts of it in addition to the regular operation of all this equipment.
EMC problems and communications, radar systems
Nebeker:
I am always trying to see things in the biggest picture. Did EMC considerations significantly restrict what kinds of communications or radar systems could be used, or were these problems unsolvable?
Kant:
They were solvable in terms of the frequency separations of the system. In other words a lot of this equipment operated in different bands. That was one factor that helped – though not entirely, because we still had to make sure that the equipment was not susceptible to the other frequencies, and especially high powers of other frequencies. That was a problem making sure that those requirements were met. I'm trying to remember how much filtering had to be put into some of these systems to make sure to keep out these other frequencies. The building was such that the systems would not be susceptible to that. Any system with waveguides would not normally be susceptible to lower frequencies because of the color frequency of the waveguide, things like that. That helped in some ways, but that was not the case in a lot of the communications systems. They operated in lower frequency bands and could be susceptible. They also had to check for possible intermodulation effects and all kinds of all these systems operating at the same time.
Nebeker:
Yes. In general all of these EMC problems could be solved with the communications systems and the guidance systems?
Kant:
Yes. For instance most of the microwave systems were directional. They had very directional antennas so that the only concern was the side lobes and things like that. The antennas were prevented from pointing at any equipment on the ship. They would have cutouts or limits or some way of preventing guns from firing at their own ship. The antennas normally would not point at your own ship or anything like that. And the spy or radar antennas wouldn't either. There were other radars on there that were a problem. There was secondary radar there, regular rotating radar, which did cover the ship. We had to watch out for that. We even ended up doing environmental impact statements for the test site. Did you come down the Turnpike to Exit 4?
Nebeker:
I came down 295.
Kant:
Okay. Even from 295 you can see off to the side where there is what they call a ship in the cornfield.
Nebeker:
Yes. I've seen that.
Kant:
That was the combat system engineering installation for AEGIS. At least some of the phase of the radar was installed there. To get that approved an environmental impact statement had to be written to show that the radar would not impose a rad haz on the highways or anything around there.
Other RCA work
Nebeker:
Your work at RCA got you into a lot of other considerations. Were you happy with the work?
Kant:
Oh yes. It was very interesting work.
Nebeker:
I see that you got into training.
Kant:
Yes. That is always done to make sure the equipment designers consider EMI and whatnot as part of their design.
Nebeker:
What was this work with the Japanese shipbuilding?
Kant:
The Japanese were building their version of the ship.
Nebeker:
Was this for the Japanese Navy?
Kant:
Yes. We just wanted to make sure that they didn't run into any of the problems we had been working to solve. They were buying the radars and a lot of the electronic equipment. They were building some of the communications equipment on their own and were building the ships on their own. We wanted to make sure that they didn't run into EMC problems and whatnot on their ships. We went over and made a few presentations to them to try to make sure they understood that. That was toward the end. We also wanted to have a hand in how they tested the ships and that they design the ships for the same requirements that we were doing. I don't know if they had any EMP requirements on their ships.
Nebeker:
You worked twenty years at RCA. You were in this EMI engineering group for the first ten years, until 1981, and then you were in the ship integration group from 1981 until retirement in 1991?
Kant:
Yes. I did some consulting to finish up some odds and ends after I retired.
Nebeker:
What was the Techmatics company?
Kant:
Techmatics is a consultant to RCA. That was a vehicle they used to hire people who had retired from RCA. RCA and GE also at the time had a rule that if you retired you couldn't work as a consultant directly for the company. Therefore they went out and set up or hired some of these other outfits. RCA would subcontract to a few of them, and RCA would tell them who they wanted as a consultant. Then they would hire them. In that way they would be working for RCA or GE but indirectly.
EMC Society
Nebeker:
Did you continue to be involved with the professional group when it became the EMC Society?
Kant:
Not as much. I went to practically every symposium they held over the years until I retired, but I wasn't involved much with the administrative side of the Society. In the Transactions around 1982 there was an article by Leonard Thomas, who was one of the original members, describing some of the history of the founding of it.
Nebeker:
We have an interview of Leonard Thomas that someone else at the center did several years ago.
Kant:
He was involved somewhat, but was sort of on his own. He was in charge of the Navy's Bureau of Ships EMC/EMI or R5 group, so he had his own empire there in which he had his own interests. I wouldn't say his article was entirely unbiased, but it covered some of the stuff there.
Techmatics
Nebeker:
Did you continue to work for Techmatics for some time?
Kant:
Just part-time for a couple of years.
Nebeker:
That was because you were involved with some of the systems there.
Kant:
Yes.
Amateur radio
Nebeker:
Is there anything I have not asked about on which you would like to comment?
Kant:
I should mention one other thing. I also have an amateur radio license, extra class, N2KM.
Nebeker:
Did you start at an early age with amateur radio?
Kant:
I was interested in it very early, even when I was in college, but at that time it was shut down.
Nebeker:
During the war?
Kant:
Yes, during the war. There was an amateur station at City College. Then I sort of lost interest until I sometime in the 1970s. They started having classes at RCA for amateur radio – teaching code and whatnot – and I finally got a license around 1978. However I have never been very active.
Nebeker:
Do you still have a setup?
Kant:
Yes. I have a transmitter and everything downstairs, but I don't have a very good antenna. That's the problem.
Nebeker:
I know a couple of amateur radio operators in our area, but chances are small that you've made contact with them. It's interesting. Many engineers were interested in radio as boys.
Kant:
Oh yes. I was interested then, but I never really followed through. I was either too busy or moving around. After you get married there are all these other things, so it never came to anything until much later.
Nebeker:
Yes. Well thank you very much.
Kant:
Okay.
Further Materials
Interviews with EMC Founders Milton Kant, Mervin First, and Dr. Ralph Showers
