What on earth happened to the Central Radio Propagation Laboratory (CRPL)?

摘要

The formation and evolution of what was known, for the 20 year period starting shortly after World War 2, as the Central Radio Propagation Laboratory (CRPL) of the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) is traced. NBS formed the Inter-Service Radio Propagation Laboratory (IRPL) in the summer of 1942 to provide the armed services with radio communication research services. IRPL was replaced, in May 1946, by the CRPL. In 1965, the Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA) was formed by merging the Weather Bureau, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the CRPL. In ESSA, CRPL, now named the Institute for Telecommunication Services and Aeronomy (ITSA), joined three sister institutes from the Weather Bureau and the Coast and Geodetic Survey, namely the Institutes for Atmospheric Science, for Oceanography, and for Earth Sciences, forming the ESSA Institutes for Environmental Research. Following this move, the telecommunication and environmentally oriented components of ITSA began to move apart. Activities pursued by these two components and their further evolution in the ensuing decades are summarized.