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Rings of Fire - How Polaroid and a Team of Miners, Engineers, and Misfits Helped Win World War II
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Rings of Fire - How Polaroid and a Team of Miners, Engineers, and Misfits Helped Win World War II
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In the weeks after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military—gunners on
naval ships and in antiaircraft units—realized it had a problem:
“We couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.” It urgently
needed a gunsight that was easy to use and quick to aim. Enter
Edwin Land, founder of Polaroid and self-taught expert in
polarizing technology, who very swiftly came up with the idea for
the optical ring sight (ORS), in which a set of concentric circles
glowed—like rings of fire—for the gunner. Rings of Fire tells
the gripping story of the unique cast of characters whose diverse
talents transformed insight into gunsight. Irascible “desert
rat,” mineral dealer, and cactus grower John Hilton mined the
initial lodes of calcite—essential for the sight, historically in
very short supply—in California; General George Patton wanted to
take Hilton to North Africa with him, but mining calcite was deemed
more important. A crew of misfits—draft dodgers, criminals, a
cross-section of the underbelly of America—under a Marine officer
did the initial mining, but as production sagged, Native Americans
of the Cahuilla tribe were recruited to pick up the slack. For the
rest of the war, calcite production shifted back to California and
then to Mexico, where a man with an FBI dossier drove operations,
while Polaroid began to develop artificial crystals to fill the
needs to produce the ORS. By the end of the war, Polaroid had
fabricated hundreds of thousands of calcite-based sights for naval
antiaircraft guns and the army’s bazookas—and the technology
would be integrated into cameras long after the war, including on
the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space missions. The famous
“Earthrise” photograph was taken using calcite. Rings of Fire
is a story of American ingenuity, determination, and grit. Larry J.
Hughes tells the story with accessible explanations of the science
and engineering behind the optical ring sight, but always lets the
colorful characters drive this vivid history of science and war.
General
Imprint: |
Stackpole Books
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
May 2024 |
Authors: |
Larry J. Hughes
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Dimensions: |
229 x 152mm (L x W) |
Pages: |
400 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8117-7389-8 |
Categories: |
Books
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LSN: |
0-8117-7389-2 |
Barcode: |
9780811773898 |
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