The Invention That Changed the World: How a Small Group of Radar Pioneers Won the Second World War and Launched a Technological Revolution

The Invention That Changed the World: How a Small Group of Radar Pioneers Won the Second World War and Launched a Technological Revolution. By Robert Buderi. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. 488 pp. $30.00, ISBN 0684-81021-2.)

Radar may have been the most important technology of World War II. The journalist and historian Walter Millis accorded that distinction to the internal combustion engine, because it powered so many of the critical weapons systems-airplanes, submarines, tanks, etc. For many people, the atomic bomb defined World War II. But, as Robert Buderi notes in this gripping and revealing history of radar, "the Atomic Bomb only ended the war. Radar won it."

Radar best defines World War II because it symbolizes the transition from quantity to quality in military competition. This was the first war in history...