1959 06 BMEWS

While I was in graduate school at RPI, RCA won a $1 billion (that was a lot then) to build the BMEWS system. They were paying people salary for the first 40 hours each week, plust 1 1/2 time salary for the next 20 hours, and double time for the last 10 (70 hour week). AND a 30% bonus. And all tax free if you stayed out of the USA for most of 18 months. It was too tempting. I was named supervisor of Tactical displays – in charge of installing a console and wall display that showed wheel a detected missies was laughed from and where it was going to impact, and another console and wall display that showed the status of each major element of the radar system.