TARGET 150416 - First tasking

Target 150416 - First tasking

Despite its overall appearance, the Ground Meteorlogical Device is not a radar. It is a receiver that sits on a tripod and has an aimable dish antenna on top of it.

The plaque does not say whether it was used by the military or for civilian atmospheric studies, but the following identification plate (with increased contrast because the writing on it is now almost invisible) indicates some of the particulars that viewers may have gotten: It was originally created for the military (U.S. Army Signal Corps - the word "Signal" is covered by the shadow). It ran on 115 volt, 60 cycle AC current (house current), and was the first (and probably only) model, as indicated by the "-1" on its identification plate.

The signal from the receiver was then piped into a highly modern data tracking center (shown below) for compiling the raw data into information usable by atmospheric specialists.

Today, it stands on a mountainside in Alamogordo, New Mexico, at the New Mexico Museum of Space History, as a testament to the early work that had to be done to understand how our atmosphere works, in order to get us above the atmosphere and into space.