AN/FPS-24 Radar Tower, Mt. Umunhum, Los Gatos, CA, 2024.
Cold war era pixels, no longer likely to interfere with your TV reception, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/53796724938/
#photography
AN/FPS-24 Radar Tower, Mt. Umunhum, Los Gatos, CA, 2024.
Cold war era pixels, no longer likely to interfere with your TV reception, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/53796724938/
#photography
From 1958 through 1980, this incongruous four story monolith was the centerpiece of the “Alameda Air Force Station”, a long-range radar site that was part of NORAD’s SAGE early warning system. The blast-hardened concrete building served as the platform for an FPS-24 radar system, a massive 120 foot wide reflector that emitted a 5 megawatt VHF pulse, continuously rotating at 5 RPM.
Notoriously, the signal disrupted TV and radio reception throughout the San Jose area.
It’s unclear if the SAGE system would have actually been effective in detecting incoming bombers, which presumably would have employed radar jammers. Fortunately, we never found out.
The antenna was removed shortly after the site’s decommissioning in 1980, but the building, a prominent local landmark visible from downtown San Jose, has been preserved.
I have mixed feelings about these cold war relics. On the one hand, they’re artifacts of what was perhaps humanity’s most dangerous folly to date, locking the world in a deadly game where the stakes only went up with each round. This doesn’t seem like something to commemorate or celebrate.
On the other hand, these objects, many now destroyed or decayed, serve as visible evidence of just how close to oblivion we are willing to go. And looked at from the right angle, they have stories to tell.
@[email protected] @[email protected] That reminds me of this old sign I saw in NYC when I visited in 2014. Chilling.
@[email protected] @[email protected] Yeah, those used to be all over the city. You still see them every now and then.
@[email protected] personally I think some should be kept as historical markers, neither celebratory nor commemorative, but simply to record.
Like you I lived through those times (but in the UK) and I’m still shocked by finding out new things about how close we came then. The latest thing I learned was about the US using depth charges in international waters during the Cuban Missile Crisis to get USSR sub B59 to surface, unaware of the almost apocalyptic argument they triggered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov
@[email protected] rule of cool says it should stay
@[email protected] Well said.
@[email protected] once as a teenager, I went camping at Rickett’s Glenn state park, near Benton Air Force Communications Annex, part of the nuclear detection and reporting system.
Curious, my friend & I hiked through the woods to photograph the cool dome. Then we heard a voice from inside the fence: “should I arrest you… or give you lunch?”
The lone staffer in the facility invited us up and showed us how all the systems worked, along with decommissioned cold war equipment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_Equipment_Facility_QRC
@[email protected] Neat!
@[email protected]
As a public historian, it’s tempting to view these as monuments…with, like all monuments, the possibility of fundamental repurposing in collective and public memory!
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We keep them for the same reason we keep Auschwitz… To remind us that these things happened and those that deny it are effin idiots.
@[email protected] The thinking might have been that if the enemy wasn’t jamming it that was a credible signal that they’re not attacking. There was a lot of game theoretic thinking going in the design of these strategic systems.
@[email protected] The SAGE console had a built in ashtray! It’s one of my favorite parts of the Computer History Museum.
@[email protected] It used to make noise on the intercom system up at SLAC in Menlo Park, and I imagine interfered with quite a few other things as well.