Antenna developments of the 1950s to the 1980s

The three decades after 1950 marked a period of intense and wide-ranging antenna accomplishment. Large reflector antennas were built for communications, radar, and radio astronomy. Founded on the developments of World War II and driven by cold war programs, the technology for phased arrays was refined and realized in several versions. The understanding of array effects was greatly advanced, and the fundamental ideas of adaptive arrays were put into practice. Several significant developments addressed the goals of the radio astronomy community, and the emerging space programs led to a deep space communications network that required steerable antennas with very high gain/effective temperature (G/T) ratios. This paper illustrates the developments of this period with examples of three antenna types: reflector antennas, phased arrays, and signal processing arrays. These examples are just a sampling of the many diverse antennas created during this prolific period in electromagnetics.