His Job Is Guiding Missiles
When Bell Laboratories scientist Edwin P. Felch '29 got up from breakfast one morning last spring, his wife was a little worried that he might back the car out without opening the garage doors first. Felch, who started with Bell 30 years ago sawing and painting iron frames for telephone switchboards, had just received some of the most exciting news of his career. Hours before and many thousand miles away in the murky waters of the South Atlantic a Navy vessel had fished out the nose cone of an intercontinental test rocket exactly on the target site. The ultra-sensitive radio guidance system that directed the missile on this historic flight had been developed for the government by an engineering team under Felch's direction, and now after four years of untiring research and testing the mechanism had proved itself beyond doubt. Felch burst out with the news to his boss as soon as he got to the Bell plant, and the whole group was called together in the company auditorium to hear the announcement of the successful final test.
Actually Felch's research team had been pretty sure in advance that the project would work. In the preliminary test the previous month, the missile had functioned perfectly over the entire 5,000-mile course; but the nose cone was never found because of a defect in the recovery unit. However, after the second test Felch claims that even the skeptics had to admit that they could pinpoint the target site.
Only a tiny part of the guidance gear is located in the missile itself. A blue magnesium sphere, looking something like a Buck Rogers space helmet, and two connected boxes receive the radio instructions from earth and keep the missile on course. On the ground, man and machine collaborate with radar, a plotting board and console controls to direct the course.
Although many men with Ph.D.'s work under him, Felch runs the operation with just his degree in physics from Dartmouth behind him. He went into the guidance system project at its outset in 1955 and was named director two years later. He has also directed the development of two other noted Bell Laboratories inventions: an electronic time measurement system which insures the highest known degree of accuracy, and the airborne magnetometer, used to detect submarines and mineral deposits from the air.
Felch, who presently resides in Chatham, N. J., plays the organ for relaxation, but he doesn't have much time to relax now. Already he has begun tinkering with his guidance system to adapt it to the huge new Titan ICBM rockets. Felch claims that this will be the real test for it.
