Wolters Information at Sea

Shipboard Command and Control in the U.S. Navy, from Mobile Bay to Okinawa
Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4214-1084-5
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 0 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology

This is the first book to explore information management at sea as practiced by the U.S. Navy from the Civil War to World War II.

The brain of a modern warship is its combat information center (CIC). Data about friendly and enemy forces pour into this nerve center, contributing to command decisions about firing, maneuvering, and coordinating. Timothy S. Wolters has written the first book to investigate the history of the CIC and the many other command and control systems adopted by the U.S. Navy from the Civil War to World War II. What institutional ethos spurred such innovation? Information at Sea tells the fascinating stories of the naval and civilian personnel who developed an array of technologies for managing information at sea, from signal flares and radio to encryption machines and radar.

Wolters uses previously untapped archival sources to explore how one of America's most technologically oriented institutions addressed information management before the advent of the digital computer. He argues that the human-machine systems used to coordinate forces were as critical to naval successes in World War II as the ships and commanders more familiar to historians.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wolters, Timothy S.

Fachgebiete

• Technische Wissenschaften Technik Allgemein Technikgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Militärwesen Seestreitkräfte
• Technische Wissenschaften Elektronik | Nachrichtentechnik Nachrichten- und Kommunikationstechnik Funktechnik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Militärgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Flags, Flares, and Lights: A World before Wireless
2. Sparks and Arcs: The Navy Adopts Radio
3. War and Peace: Coordinating Naval Forces
4. A Most Complex Problem: Demanding Information
5. Creating the Brain of a Warship: Radar and the CIC
Conclusion
Abbreviations
Notes
Essay on Sources
Archives and Manuscript Collections
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Wolters, Timothy S.
Timothy S. Wolters, an engineer-qualified submariner and captain in the United States Navy Reserve, is an assistant professor of history at Iowa State University. He formerly held the Ramsey Chair of Naval Aviation History at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum.