This interview covers Saad’s professional career, with an emphasis on his work at the MIT Radiation Lab during World War II. Saad received his BS in Electrical Engineering in 1941, specializing in communication. He joined the MIT Radiation Lab (Rad Lab) in January 1942, partly to serve his country and partly to avoid the draft. He worked in the theoretical division under Norm Ramsey and Ed Purcell, and then switched to work in the microwave components division under Jerrold Zacharias. In particular he designed a directional coupler, devised a system to see if/when microwave parts would break down at high altitude, and then worked on the microwave aspects of the beacon group. After the war ended, he worked for a number of companies in the microwave field—Submarine Signal Company (1945-49), Microwave Development Laboratories (1949-53), both of these in association with Henry Riblet, and Sylvania (1953-55). He then founded his own company, Sage Laboratories, working on coaxial lines and other related media. Raab describes the microwave business as having been heavily dependent on government purchases to begin with, only lately finding wider private-sector markets. The industry itself is friendly and incestuous, with competitors buying and selling products from one another.

Links:

http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Oral-History:Theodore_Saad

http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/IEEE_Microwave_Theory_and_Techniques_Society_History