Description

Miscellaneous metal parts, many of them are square-shaped tubes.

Despite its name, when the MIT Radiation Laboratory was founded in 1940, it wasn’t dedicated to nuclear physics. Instead, it worked on a type of electromagnetic radiation called microwaves. As researchers at the Rad Lab developed microwave radar technology, there was an increasing appreciation for the importance of radio frequency components to radar. Group 53 was formed to study radio frequency, and they called the hardware they developed “plumbing” because the metal parts and pipes when assembled did remind observers of plumbing, though these parts served as conduits for electromagnetic waves instead of water.