Experience, Knowledge and Instrument in Submarine Detection and the Invention of Sonar

During World War I submarine detection presented a strategic technological challenge, which inspired, among others, the invention of new methods, like sonar, and the employment of hitherto unused scientific phenomena. The talk will trace the origins of the inventor Constatine Chilowsky’s suggestion of the method and of the physical realization of sonar by the physicist Paul Langevin. Langevin and Ernest Rutherford independently applied piezoelectricity, which became crucial for later electronic technology. Yet, while Langevin employed it for sonar, Rutherford invented a measuring device. These different results originated on one hand in diverging goals of the two physicists, and on the other in Langevin’s more extensive knowledge of and practice with piezoelectricity, which allowed him to manipulate the crystals and contrive the novel ultrasonic design required.
Dr. Shaul Katzir is a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the history of science. He has studied and taught in Israel and the US and has published extensively about the history of physics and its connection to technology at the 19th and 20th centuries.