In Memory of George W.

Stimson
George W. Stimson became fascinated with radio waves as a teenage amateur radio enthusiast,
designing and building transmitters and receivers.
His first brush with radar, which came in the early years of World War II, was bouncing echoes off
Navy blimps in between experiments outside the ultra-high frequency lab at Stanford University.
Upon receiving his bachelors degree in electrical engineering, he did some additional course work
at Caltech, went through the Navys radar schools at Bowdoin and MIT, and wound up as an electronics officer on an attack transport.
Following the war, he served as an engineer on Southern California Edisons frequency-change
project and at its completion joined Northrops Snark Missile project. There quite by chance he
became involved in technical publications and motion pictures.
In 1951, he was hired by Hughes Aircraft Company to write a widely circulated technical periodical called the Radar
Interceptor. Working closely with the Companys top designers, in the ensuing years he observed at first hand the fascinating evolution of airborne radar from the simple systems for the first all-weather interceptors to the advanced pulsed doppler
systems of today. He witnessed the development of the first radar-guided air-to-air missiles, the first incorporation of digital
computers in small airborne radars, the birth of laser radar, SAR, and the programmable digital signal processor; and he saw
the extension of airborne radar technology to space applications.
Following his retirement in 1990, he remained active in the field, teaching a short course in modern radar at the National Test
Pilots School in Mojave, writing a technical brochure on Hughes antenna radiation-pattern and RCS measurement facilities,
producing a fully narrated interactive multimedia presentation on the new HYSAR radar, and writing the article on radar for
the 1998 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana.

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