Abstract :
“A Jules Verne feat” … “in a class with the atomic bomb” … “Fantastic experiment” … “Applications almost beyond immediate comprehension.” These were some of the exultant phrases that hit newspaper readers on the morning of Friday, Jan. 25, 1946, as they learned how the U.S. Army had bounced a radar signal off the moon. “Man had finally reached beyond his own planet” was how Time magazine put it later.