Crystals Go To War

Clear communications were critical to the success of the Allies in World War II. The stability of the Allied transmitters and receivers depended on the performance of tiny quartz crystals. During WWII, the heavy reliance on these crystals spurred on tremendous advances in the manufacturing of dependable crystals. Before the wartime need, the performance of radio crystals was largely inconsistent but there was little need for wireless communications of the wartime magnitude, and wired radios and telephones were the primary communications methods in World War I. But the tactical needs of WWII essentially created the crystal resonator/oscillator industry beginning in Carlisle, PA and spreading all across the country, with hundreds of companies and tens of thousands of workers pressed into service. 

Aside from the Manhattan Project, the advances in crystal-oscillator manufacturing represented the second-largest scientific undertaking of WWII.   This 41 minute film, produced in 1943 by the Reeves Sound Company, describes the process of quartz crystal manufacturing from start to finish.   While the physics of quartz resonance was fairly well understood, the manufacturing methods avaialble were crude by today's standards - highly manual and labor-intense.    But given the national emergency, more bodies made up for the inefficiency of the process.