Dixon Wall C

U.S. Army--I spent most of my army time at Fort Monmouth, a good bit at USASARDL: United States Army Signal Research and Development Laboratories. While I was still in R.O.T.C. at Texas A & M, I spent Army summer camp at Fort Gordon, GA, about a month. After summer camp I went up to USASRDL for about a month. My sweet fiancee, Gail Connell, waited patiently for me in Port Arthur, bless her heart. She was finishing up her BA in English at Lamar Tech University. I was in the Molecular Frequency Control Division, to which I returned after Army Basic Training. We had 5 or 6 Atomichrons, 2 or three Ammonia Masers and another frequency standard I didn't have much to do with, a Ruby maser. That was Dr. Plotkin's project. He was one of the few Americans in the division. He had a PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Plotkin invited Gail and me over to his house to hear his string quartet, one time. I worked with the ammonia maser and the Cesium Beam Atomichrons, and designed and built several pieces of electronics. Each Atomichron cost $75,000 in 1958 currency. The Atomichron was built by National Instruments. Its frequency was stabilized with a crystal oscillator, which was in turn corrected by the transition frequency between a couple of states of the cesium atom. I can still remember the resonance frequency of the transition. It's 9.192631770 GHz ±40 Hz., an X-band microwave frequency. The Austrian scientists coaxed the error down to 4 Hz. Hz were called cycles per second back then. My boss was Friedrich Von Bunn. I remember some American salesman asked him if he couldn't get a loan to finance a house under the G.I. Bill. He told the man "Ja, I vas in the var, but I vas on der wrong side!" Another member of the staff was Dr. Gernot Winkler. The Division head was Dr. Fritz Reder. All or most of the Austrians had gone to the same university in Austria. On Project WOSAC, we were testing the Special Theory of Relativity. We had several Atomichrons aboard a former Air Force Tanker, a Stratocruiser. These frequency standards are accurate to 5 parts in 10 to the tenth. There were a couple of Atomichrons on our ground station, at an Air Force Base in Rome, NY. The ground station was maintained by Lt. Paul Brown and me. We had the "stringent requirement of keeping the equipment in operation for 24 hours a day for 15 days," according to the notes I found. We had 8-hour work days every other eight hours! The airplane circled the globe with the Atomichrons constantly running, and the time was compared at the beginning of the trip and at the end, to test the theory of relativity. Paul and I were also alternates for the trip, which meant we got all the shots but no trip. We had shots for typhus, small pox, diphtheria, cholera, and several others. When the guys came back they had pineapples and several other things. John Leonard, a technician, was kind enough to take us and his mother out for steaks when they got back.
Yesterday (6 May 2005) I found a set of plans for project WOSAC in our recycling pile. Why they were there, we don't know. Anyway, before breakfast that day I was reading the sheets and found out part of the trip mentioned above involved flying, not only East-West but South-North. No wonder it took them so long! They flew from Rome, New York to Talara, Peru,and back, in addition to the trip around the globe. Also at USASRDL I ran into another lieutenant, J. T. Madddux, who had worked at Defense Research Laboratories at the University of Texas. He gave me contacts to write, and I wrote and applied for a job. I was hired as a graduate student, and I worked half time for a while, and finally got my Master's degree in electrical engineering. Meanwhile the lab changed its name from "Defense Research Laboratory" to "Applied Research Laboratories." I worked there for 38 years.