The New York Review of Books: The Tragic Tale of a Genius

The New York Review of Books: The Tragic Tale of a Genius: "The Bell system became operational and the Wiener-Bigelow system never saw combat. In the end, the choice of the Bell system probably had little effect on the course of the war. The big breakthrough in antiaircraft technology was the invention of the proximity fuse, a radar-controlled fuse that enabled a shell to explode and destroy an airplane nearby without directly hitting it. Without proximity fuses, neither the Bell system nor the Wiener-Bigelow system was accurate enough to shoot down airplanes reliably. After proximity fuses became available in 1944, the Bell system was good enough. "