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
This is a stitched imaged made from two captures with the Rodenstock 70mm/5.6 HR-Digaron-W lens, Phase One IQ4-150 digital back (@ ISO 50), and a Cambo WRS 1250 camera, shifted left/right 15mm, producing a 230MP final image.
Note that the full resolution version isn’t currently up on flickr due to a bug preventing the upload of very large images there. Currently a large (but reduced size, 100MP) version occupies a placeholder there.
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.
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!
@mattblaze@federate.social Well said.
@mattblaze@federate.social 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.
@natematias@social.coop Neat!
@mattblaze@federate.social rule of cool says it should stay
@mattblaze@federate.social
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.@mattblaze@federate.social 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
@mattblaze@federate.social @eythian@teh.entar.net That reminds me of this old sign I saw in NYC when I visited in 2014. Chilling.
@timrichards@aus.social @eythian@teh.entar.net Yeah, those used to be all over the city. You still see them every now and then.
@mattblaze@federate.social 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.
@mattblaze@federate.social The SAGE console had a built in ashtray! It’s one of my favorite parts of the Computer History Museum.
@mattblaze@federate.social 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.
@mattblaze@federate.social I go hiking up that mountain. You can see it from my back yard.
@mattblaze@federate.social Another Bay Area Cold War location is the Nike missile site in Marin County. They give tours and on some days guys who manned the station are there to take questions. I’d never heard of a defensive nuke before seeing them there. There were hundreds of these around the country. I think this is the only place where you can see it. Have you been?
You reminded me of a radar system I worked on back in the 1980s
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAVE_PAWS
It’s now a museum??
@mattblaze@federate.social I imagine they are mo longer there on but I remember some faded painted warning markings that you were about to enter military property not far off Hicks road onto Uminhum after the cattle gate, back in the late 1980’s. It was already decommissioned at that point.
