The brain of a modern warship is its combat information center (CIC). Information about friendly and enemy forces pours into this nerve center, informing command decisions about firing, maneuvering, and coordinating. Timothy S. Wolters has written the first book to investigate the history of the CIC and the many other command and control systems adopted by the U.S. Navy from the Civil War to World War II. What institutional ethos spurred such innovation? Information at Sea tells the fascinating stories of the naval and civilian personnel who developed an array of technologies for managing information at sea, from signal flares and radio to encryption machines and radar.Wolters uses previously untapped archival sources to explore how one of America's most technologically oriented institutions addressed information management before the advent of the digital computer. He argues that the human-machine systems used to coordinate forces were as critical to naval successes in World War II as the ships and commanders more familiar to historians.
Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Flags, Flares, and Lights: A World before Wireless 2. Sparks and Arcs: The Navy Adopts Radio 3. War and Peace: Coordinating Naval Forces 4. A Most Complex Problem: Demanding Information 5. Creating the Brain of a Warship: Radar and the CIC Conclusion Abbreviations Notes Essay on Sources Archives and Manuscript Collections Index
""An outstanding history of the US Navy from the Civil War through the Second World War... Information at Sea has four particular strengths. First, it reveals the connective tissues and nervous system of shipboard command and control across an eighty-year period through extensive pioneering archival research. Second, its well written chronicle of technological investigation, adaptation, innovation, and combat applications will appeal to experts and general readers alike. Third, it seamlessly interweaves bureaucratic decision-making with matters of laboratory research and development, field experimentation, adjustments in training and education, and the new command and control systems; Wolters explains how, why, and to what effect the Navy made changes to improve its combat efficiency. Fourth, the book challenges the longstanding notion that entrenched naval conservatism time and again retarded innovation. Wolters makes abundantly clear that, on the contrary, the Navy regularly listened, learned, and made intelligent decisions about integrating new communications and detection systems... For all these reasons, Information at Sea should stand as a landmark work of military history.""
