The Lord's Ways Are Inscrutable
Often the innovative ideas that revolutionize a field come from outside — from someone who looks at things with fresh eyes, an upstart. That's my case.
Often the innovative ideas that revolutionize an activity come from outside, from someone who looks at the matter with different eyes, an outsider — that's my case.
On March 23, 1988, a milestone in weather radars took place. That day we managed to transmit the image from the Camagüey radar, obtained by digitizing the radar's video signal, to the Forecast Department (now called a Center) at Casa Blanca. The image (in 4 colors: white, black, light blue, and magenta) showed rain over Nuevitas. Dr. Rubiera called the Nuevitas station and confirmed what the image showed. Dr. Rosa Elena Simeón Negrín was present and welcomed the idea. A year later we materialized the official charter of the Technical Development Laboratory. Meanwhile, at the headquarters of the Instituto de Meteorologia (Cuban Meteorological Institute), they were preparing to install a closed-circuit television system so that the forecasters could see what the MRL-5 radar operator was seeing on his screen.
Well yes, the closed-circuit television idea was, even at that moment, obsolete and unnecessary, and it would only partially solve the problem of the Casa Blanca radar, which sits in a building near the Forecast Department. Seeing the operator's screen meant getting very little information (faster horses). Digitized information opened the path to remote transmission, and it was the first time in the world that a "microcomputer" was used — that is, a personal computer, an Olivetti M24 (IBM-XT compatible). At that time, the entire world was using "minicomputers" like the PDP-11 (or its Soviet equivalent, the SM-4) for these purposes. So yes, finally, "automobiles" instead of "faster horses." On March 23, 1988, the "grandfather" of the Cuban Weather Radar was born, with Rubiera acting as "midwife."
