Electrical system transients and sensitive circuit control for missiles and space vehicles

AT ONE TIME a fairly extensive literature was compiled on the phenomenon then known as ¿radio noise.¿1¿3 At first this literature was almost exclusively concerned with what could be heard coming out of the head phones of a radio set that was not signal, and later on with the ¿grass¿ that grew on the radar picture. There was an intense flurry of interest in the problem at the latter part of World War II, because of the general introduction of very-high-frequency equipment. But once the problem had been brought down to its proper proportions and the interference eliminated, the whole question was dropped. Now, with the advent of solid-state devices and their susceptibility to destruction with transient impulses, and the increasing use of digital-type computers to which may transients look exactly like a ¿bit¿ of information, there is a revival of interest in the subject. It is hoped that there will be, at last, enough continuing effort to obtain interference suppression by design, instead of last-minute frenzied efforts with a pocketful of filters and capacitors. Perhaps the present changes of the earlier names to ¿radio-frequency interference¿ or ¿electromagnetic interference¿ will help.4¿8