The Unreliable Nation:
      Hostile Nature and Technological Failure
      in the Cold War
by Edward Jones-Imhotep

Synopsis

This is a book about an era in which radio engineering in Canada was driven by national anxieties. These anxieties were about control and sovereignty of the nation in face of external forces and internal political unrest and perceived social inequity. It describes how engineering goals were set to counter these negative forces, and how both technology and organisations over time succeeded in one way mastering these threats but were overtaken themselves.


The period covered the Second World War to 1972. The War drove the development of short-wave radio communications but also highlighted the need for prediction of ionospheric conditions so as to allow radio communication links to be established reliably. It was found that link availability and performance at higher latitudes was difficult if not bordering on impossible to predict. This was because of auroral activity and the geomagnetic field concerntration close to the North Pole. This gave a uniquely Canadian aspect to the short-wave radio engineering work and the book explains how this was seen as particular to Canadian territory and a challenge to be mastered by Canadians and not one to be handed over to the British of American engineers or scientists.


This post-War period coincided with a set of internal and external threats. The Canadian North was sparsely populated and an ethnic mix of people from European origin in larger settlements with a Native area around these and Inuit in remoter areas. None of these were connected by telegraph cable nor covered by live national broadcast radio or television. These inhabitants of the North were perceived to be socially distant from the rest of Canada and from the Canadian-mindset. So one goal of short-wave radio was to connect these remote populations in a nation-affirming way and provide a range of services available to urbaanised canadiaans but lacking in remote areas. An example would be schooling and business awareness for Native and Inuit peoples. This was to head off a societal gap turning into unrest.


The perceived external threats ranged from external influence (Voice of America and Radio Moscow broadcasting into the Canadian North), to concerns about being caught in middle if the Cold War escalated. So work to characterise the ionosphere also served a military purpose because the detection of incoming missiles passing through the ionosphere was also prone to disruption from auroa and geo-magnetic storms.


The book set out the struggle to record ionospheric activity at remote recording stations in harsh conditions, with machines that were unreliable in extreme weather, with analytic techniques that fell short because while well suited to characterising ionospheric activity at lower latitudes but fell short of making sense of the much more complex auroral and geo-magnetic Northern environment. Over time, standardised instuments and recording techniques and standardised interpretations of those recordings allowed the creation of a model of ionospheric propagation in the North.


At this time other eras were starting. Sputnik was launched in 1957 and it became apparent that top-side ionospheric sounding could be done from satellites. To this end the Canadian Alouette near-polar orbit satellite was built and launched and because of its high-reliability was able to send back millions of ionospheric sounding. This then resulted in rigourous hand processing of soundings giving way to automatic but less rigourous automated processing. This era further characterised Canadian engineering in terms of reliability and automation.


And the technological changes continued. If a near-polar orbit satellite could do top-side soundings, then a geo-stationary one could be used to broadcast to all of Canada. At the time the issue of Quebec separating from Canada was an political issue. In this milleu, a satellite which could be used to culturally unify Canada was seen as a solution and short-wave radio was abandoned. However the book looks at the many benefits for Canada that came out of this era and also the decisions and options which if implemented would have perhaps optimised the engineering and cultural outcomes. Its value is also in how it places engineering into political and social context of the time.

Reference

Edward Jones-Imhotep
The Unreliable Nation:
      Hostile Nature and Technological Failure in the Cold War
The MIT Press, 2017
ISBN: 9780262036511