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HENRI GASTON BUSIGNIES
1 905- 1 981
BY LOUIS T. RADER
HENR! GASTON BUSIGNTES, an outstanding scientist, inventor, and
engineer, died on June 20, 1981, in Antibes on the French Riviera at
the age of seventy-six. In 1975 he retired from International Tele-
phone and Telegraph Company (ITT) where he had been Senior
Vice-President and Chief Scientist. His career, all with ITT,
spanned a half century of major contributions to the field of telecom-
munications. He was responsible for more than 140 patented inven-
tions, many of which were of major significance to commercial and
. . . . . .
me notary aerial navigation.
Dr. Busignies was born in 1905 at Sceaux near Paris, France, the
son of a mechanical engineer. He showed a very early interest in
radio and became a "ham" at age fourteen. Even as a teenager he
soon discovered that he was more interested in experimenting with
radio circuits to improve them than in receiving far-off stations,
which was a prime interest in the early days of radio. He studied at
the Jules Ferry College in Versailles, and in 1926, at the age of
twenty-one, obtained a degree in electrical engineering from the
Institute Normal Electro Technique in Paris. In 1926, before getting
his degree, he obtained his first patent on a radio compass, a device
that electronically pointed to the direction of the radio transmitter
from which waves were being received. In that same year he
received the first of his many awards, the Lakhovsky Award by the
Radio Club of France.
In 1928 Dr. Busignies became an engineer with the ITT Paris
29
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
Laboratories. For the next twelve years he developed radio direction
finders, airplane radio navigation systems, and early radars. In the
first demonstration of an aircraft guidance system in 1936, his auto-
matic direction finder dramatically guided a plane from Paris,
France, to the Isle of Reunion off Madagascar. The equipment was
demonstrated in the United States in 1937, and he continued to
perfect it until World War II.
Dr. Busignies invented the world's first automatic direction finder,
for which he received the Pioneer Award of the Aeronautical and
Navigational Electronics Group of the Institute of Radio Engineers
in 1958. The award also covered development programs including
TACAN (tactical air navigation), the standard air navigation system
used by U.S. and NATO military aircraft, and part of VORTAC
(very high frequency omnidirectional range) in the Nation's com-
mon system for air navigation and traffic control on federal airways.
A model of the automatic radio direction finder resides in the
Smithsonian Institution, where it was presented by the inventor and
accepted in 1975.
One of Dr. Busignies' inventions was destined to make a vital
contribution to the Allied war effort in the Battle of the Atlantic. At
the time of the fall of Paris in World War II, much secret electronic
work was being done in the ITT Paris Laboratory for the French
military. One project, initiated by information supplied to the
French by the British secret service, involved a method by which
German U-boats could be located. The U-boats required periodic
radio communications with each other and with Germany. To avoid
being discovered by means of their radio transmitters, the Germans
developed a technique of "burst" transmission, consisting of very
short time intervals on the air, usually less than a second. During the
years 1934 through 1945, Dr. Busignies received four patents on a
high-frequency direction finder, later known as Huff-Duff, which
was able to show instantaneously the direction from which the radio
signals of the enemy submarines were coming and to indicate it on a
cathode ray tube in a compass setting.
During the German occupation of Paris, Dr. and Mrs. Busignies
along with two of their associates and their families (a party of ten)
were able to escape from Paris with their working drawings and
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HENRI GASTON BUSIGNIES
31
models under the eyes of the Gestapo and make their way first to
Lyons, in unoccupied France, then by ship to North Africa, Portu-
gal, and finally the United States. The invention was demonstrated
to top U.S. military men, who immediately ordered that prototypes
be built. Production followed rapidly.
A network of Huff-Duff stations was quickly established, first
along the East Coast and later along both coasts. One thousand
equipment stations were installed on destroyers and aircraft carriers,
and 1,500 mobile ground stations were made for the U.S. Signal
Corps. Another 30 to 40 stations were installed throughout the
world.
German submarines were immediately located, as many as ~ 50 in
a single day during the peak period of the Battle of the Atlantic in
1943. This translated into raising Hitler's submarine losses to as
high as forty in one month and decreasing Allied convoy ship losses
to one-fiftieth of their worst figures. Hitler admitted that this was the
"one single technical invention" that caused the German U-boats to
lose the Battle of the Atlantic.
In recognition of these contributions, Dr. Busignies was awarded
the U.S. Navy Certificate of Commendation for Outstanding Ser-
vice to the Navy and the Presidential Certificate of Merit for his
activities with the National Defense Research Council.
Another early wartime Busignies invention was the moving-target
indicator (MTI) radar. This ingenious circuit scrubs off the radar
screen every echo from objects that are stationary and displays only
echoes from targets that are moving. In addition to military applica-
tions, the MTI radar is used in all airports of the world to eliminate
the confusing echoes from cities and other stationary objects sur-
. . .
rounding airports.
After the war Dr. Busignies elected to remain in the United States
rather than to return to France, and he became a naturalized citizen
in 1953. Since 1941, when he participated in the founding of ITT
Laboratories, he played a major role in the growth of the corpora-
tion's U.S. activities. He became Technical Director of its laborato-
ries (1949), Vice-President (1953), Executive Vice-President (1954),
and President from 1956 until 1960, when he was advanced to Vice-
President and General Technical Director of ITT. He later became
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
Senior Vice-President and Chief Scientist of the worldwide corpora-
tion.
After the war Dr. Busignies concentrated on the development of
aids to navigation as well as on radio navigation. In addition to the
two fields, noted above, of the radio compass and Huff-Duff, he
made significant contributions in several areas. Inventions in the
radar field in addition to the MTI were the IFF (Identification
Friend or Foe), conical scanning radar, shell trajectory control, gun-
fire control, three-dimension radar, and a system to deceive and
induce errors in enemy radar observations. The importance of the
inventions to national defense is indicated by the fact that many of
them were kept secret for periods ranging from seven years for gun
control radar to twenty-six years for the IFF. Some of his inventions
are still in the secret category.
His inventions in the field of navigation systems included parts of
ILS (instrument landing systems), TACAN, and VORTAC.
His inventions in the communications field cover the first use of
Doppler effect in transmission and reception, the principle of
phased-array antenna, and the use of metallic needles and ionized
gases in orbit for communication when used as reflectors of radio
waves.
Under his direction, some of the first pulse time modulation and
pulse code modulation systems were developed, as well as the first
commercial over-the-horizon link for television and telephone
between Florida and Cuba in 1957-1958. He was also responsible
for developing one of the first satellite antenna, 40 feet in diameter,
in Nutley, New Jersey, in 1958.
In March 1959 Dr. Busignies presented to the Committee of
Science and Astronautics of the U.S. Congress a project for interna-
tional communication by synchronous satellites. This testimony con-
tributed to legislation establishing the Communication Satellite
Corporation.
Fortunately, Dr. Busignies' genius was well recognized during his
lifetime. In addition to the recognitions noted earlier the Pioneer
Award, the U.S. Navy Certificate of Commendation, and the Presi-
dential Certificate of Merit—he was elected a Fellow of the Institute
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HENRI GASTON BUSIGNIES
33
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1945, and in 1964
received the Institute's David Sarnoff Award for outstanding
achievements in the field of electronics. In 1969 he received the
IEEE Award in International Communications and in 1977 the
Edison Award. In 1974 he was elected a Fellow of the Radio Club of
America and in 1975 received their Armstrong Medal. He was
awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree in 1958 by Newark
College of Engineering and an honorary Doctor of Engineering
degree in 1970 by the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. He received
the Industrial Research Institute Medal in 1971 for his "outstanding
leadership management ability, vision and wise counsel. "
Dr. Busignies was the author of many technical publications, pub-
lished both in the United States and in Europe. He was also invited
to give many addresses, such as "Intercontinental Telecommunica-
tions by Artificial Satellites," which he presented at the Thirteenth
International Congress of Communications in Genoa; "Industry
Can Meet the Challenge of National Goals," presented at the
National Security Industrial Association Symposium; "Science and
Technological Changes: How to Survive Them," presented at the
Governors' Conference on Science and Technology; and "Compet-
ing Internationally," the keynote address before the Thirteenth
Annual Joint Engineering Management Conference all presented
in 1965.
Dr. Busignies was elected to the National Academy of Engineer-
ing (NAE) in 1966 and immediately began a long and distinguished
service to the Academy. He was a member of the NAE Council from
1968 to 1971; Chairman of the NAE Project Committee from 1970
to 1973; a member of the Division of Engineering's Executive Com-
mittee from 1971 to 1973 and of its Committee on Space Applica-
tions. He served as Chairman of the NAE Committee on
Telecommunications from 1973 until July 1974 when this committee
was reorganized as the National Research Council's Committee on
Telecommunication-Computer Applications. He continued to serve
as Chairman until 1976 and also served as a member of a number of
this committee's support panels.
Noted for his technical preeminence, Dr. Busignies was also an
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
extremely courteous person who gave freely of his time to help
others" from student to practitioner and as a result he inspired
very strong loyalties in all who came in contact with him. He was in
truth one of "nature's gentlemen."
Dr. Busignies is survived by his wife, a daughter, and two grand-
children.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
gaston busignies
