From Radar to Reliability
Panel: Reflections on CSL, 1951-2001

By Doug Peterson

In the 1950s, University of Illinois football fans noticed a strange, wooden shack perched in the southwest corner of Memorial Stadium - and it was clearly not the press box.  Little did they know that this "secret shack," as some called it, was being used by the Coordinated Science Laboratory to generate breakthroughs in radar technology.

CSL researchers tracked cars passing to the west along route 45.  And out of the radar research of the 1950s came a string of successes, such as: the first portable radar; a side-looking radar that could peek through the Iron Curtain from a plane flying along the border; and a radar that could track moving vehicles.

In October of 2001, some of these researchers returned to CSL as part of a special "Reflections" panel.  They came to track the progress of CSL over the years in celebration of 50 years of groundbreaking research.

"I am a ghost of CSL past," said Richard Brown, a professor emeritus and one of those who had worked at the laboratory during the secret-shack years.

As Brown explained, the driving force in creating CSL was Wheeler Loomis, head of the U of I physics department.  Loomis decided to form a military research laboratory in Urbana so that the top U of I minds wouldn't be lost to other labs during a military crisis - as had happened during World War II.

"During World War II, the best faculty from departments all across the country went to laboratories at Boston and Los Alamos and a large number of them never returned to the departments from whence they came," Brown said.  "Loomis vowed that the next time around he'll start a lab in Urbana and keep my boys home.  And he did."

That lab was CSL, and it emerged in 1951 during the Korean War.  In its first decade, the focus was classified research that produced inventions such as the electric vacuum gyroscope and one of the earliest computer-controlled Navy defense systems.

"When you see these warships all over the world, you see parts of CSL embodied in the logic of the communications and data processing systems," Brown said.

When the Korean War ended, CSL made a three-year transition into an unclassified laboratory; and the 1960s saw strong programs in control, computing and communications.  But as the visible sign of the Department of Defense at U of I, the laboratory also became a focus of campus unrest during the Vietnam War.

Dale Compton, CSL director at the time, spoke at the 50-year celebration and he recalled the "constant upheaval and discussion about the role of the Department of Defense on this campus."  He remembered vividly the Saturday night in which he walked out of the old faculty center and saw the National Guard on the campus.

"To walk out of that building and to see 17-year-olds with drawn bayonets across the street.  It was a sight I'd not like to see again," said Compton.

In the wake of the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, CSL struggled with diminished funding. But the late Bob Chien, a former IBM researcher and a CSL director, played a key role in leading the laboratory out of trouble.

Chien expanded work in information theory and artificial intelligence, recalled CSL professor Tim Trick.  The 70s became the laboratory's "solid-state decade," as researchers delved into research on semiconductor materials and devices.  In fact, CSL was one of the first universities to begin research in MBE and MOCVD - valuable new processes for growing semiconductor crystals.

Trick was a CSL director in the 1980s, a time when the next major challenge emerged - foreign competition challenging U.S. supremacy in semiconductors.  In response, the nation invested more in basic research in the 80s, he said, and CSL became a leader in very high speed integrated circuits and very large-scale integration circuits.

In the 1990s, the Joint Services Electronics Program, which had formed the core of CSL's funding since the beginning, came to an end.  But the laboratory adapted, as it had so many times before.  According to the current director, Ravi Iyer, CSL established itself a leader in building the infrastructure that supports telecommunications.

Of the $90 million in research awards from a major new information technology initiative by the National Science Foundation in the year 2000, CSL received $7.8 million--more than any other laboratory in the country.

As David Daniel, dean of the U of I College of Engineering put it, "If you want to look for gems of the campus, I don't think you could find one with a better combination of the three C's - cut, clarity and caret - than one  finds right here in CSL."


Reflections Panel Members

Richard Brown, faculty member, 1959-1984
Dale Compton, CSL Director,1965-1970
Jose Cruz, Jr., CSL Assistant Director, 1985-1986
Ravi Iyer, CSL Director, 2000-
Ken Jenkins, CSL Director, 1987-1999
Tim Trick, CSL Director, 1984-1986
Moderator: Professor Bill Perkins