On October 13th, Jonathan Allen along with Joe Jesson, adjunct professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at TCNJ, will speak about the RCA AR-88, a receiver that was vital in capturing German messages during WWII.
Title: Restoration of Alan Turing’s Preferred Interception Receiver, the RCA AR-88; RCA’s greatest communications receiver
Abstract: During WWII, the interception of German encrypted wireless communication by Britain’s many Y-stations where operators, listening to banks of RCA AR-88 receivers, provided the captured encrypted messages in order for Bletchley Park to then process these messages into plaintext. Messages to be decrypted were handed to Alan Turing’s – of the movie’s Imitation Game fame – Hut 8 team at Bletchley Park.
Jonathan Allen and Joe Jesson, both esteemed men of the electrical engineering community, are heavily involved with the Sarnoff Collection here at TCNJ. Jonathan will be speaking about the restoration work he’s done for the museum, while Joe will talk about the history of the RCA AR-88 receiver, including the intensive design requirements issued by David Sarnoff. Joe will also showcase the results of a lab done by students in the TCNJ ECE department where students compared a SPICE RF bandpass AR-88 filter simulation with a vacuum tube SPICE library model that was derived from modifying a (biased) FET amplifier model. Come hear about the world-class interception this receiver could provide and the interesting role it had in WWII.
Date: Friday, October 13th
Time: 7:30 PM – 9 PM
Location: Roscoe West Room 201
This event is being hosted by IEEE’s Princeton/Central Jersey section. Register for the event here. For more information on the Sarnoff Collection, check out their site.