Radar echo from the Moon with an electrochemical integrator (Bay)
Eco radar de la Luna con integrador electroquímico (Bay)
- Date
- 1946 · confidence high
- Place
- Újpest, Budapest, Hungary
- Credited to
- Zoltán Bay
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
The Hungarian physicist received on 6 February 1946 the echo of a radar pulse bounced off the Moon. To extract such a weak signal he summed many pulses with an electrochemical counter (coulometer).
The US Army's Project Diana obtained the first echo on 10 January 1946, almost a month earlier; Bay's was the second group to succeed, but with an original integration method. He did the experiment at the Tungsram laboratory in Újpest.
What it led to
- radio astronomy and planetary radar
- a method for integrating weak signals
- Earth–Moon–Earth (EME) communications