“They’ll sample the sea water from nine different directions around the ship,”
Tom said. “A computer inside, called a coincidence analyzer or CO-AN, will spot any particles of matter which show up evenly among the samples. It will also figure the direction in which to find the greatest concentration of those particles, after allowing for current drift.”
BLOODHOUND EXPERIMENT 9T
Inside the Sea Hound’s cabin, the other units of Tom’s tracking apparatus had been combined into a large control and output console.
“The foreign particles spotted by the CO-AN will show up as flashing lights on this readout panel,” Tom went on. “I’ll pick out whichever ones we want to follow, and then tune in those same elements on this TC, or trail constructor.”
“Like saying ‘Follow that taxi!’ to your undersea driver, eh?” Bud quipped.
“Right. Now those orders are fed to a compound trace synthesizer or CTS. It compares them with the signals it’s receiving from CO-AN-and figures out what course must be steered to keep the two sets of data matched up.”
“And the CTS outputs to these scopes?” Hank asked.
“Yes, they’re our visual guides if we want to steer manually,” Tom replied.
“On this first scope, a luminous dotted line will show the compass course of the object we’re tracking. This second scope is a depth chart, to show its upward or downward course. And a dot will center on this cross-hair scope if we steer on the beam.”
“How about these two marker arrows on the driftometer output dial?” Arv put in.
“We align them to compensate for any current.”