From Carp Memories, written by Brian Johannesson, P.Eng. December 2011 (as passed to Dave Peters). Explanation of the technical basis for the Canadian ICONORAMA from one of its builders.
“From 1959 to 1964 I was an Electronics Engineer with Canadian Aviation Electronics on Cote deLiesse Road in Montreal. In early 1961 CAE was awarded a contract from the Canadian Army todesign and manufacture an Iconorama display system for the government bunker being built near Carp,Ontario. This system was to read teletype messages containing target information, originating from NORAD SAGE computers at Colorado Springs, then decode, translate and draw the target information on the theater screen.”
Brian Johannesson visited the Diefenbunker from his home south of Toronto in the summer of 2012 to see what we were doing about the FWC and the ICONORAMA. Unfortunately the device display was not pursued and nothing further was done about this important technological achievement, such as to complete the ‘dressing’ of the FWC reconstruction. The ICONORAMA was a mainstay of graphical information transmission and display from its installation circa 1961 to its disposal circa 1966?
FWC just after its replication circa 2009. The openings in the back wall are where the various components of the ICONORAMA Images would have been projected from.
One of five sequential slides illustrating the display of the ICONORAMA in the FWC created by Amber Peters circa 2012. Display currently not functioning. Projection equipment has been removed/repurposed.
Iconorama – A five slide simulation of the icinorama display in the Federal Warning Centre (FWC) that would have been transmitted from NORAD HQ to the Diefenbunker is illustrated below. This simulation was produced by Diefenbunker volunteer Amber Peters for continuous display in the Federal Warning Centre reconstruction to illustrate the type of images that would have been projected on the front screen by the Iconorama. (The video projector that was acquired and installed for this simulation was removed from the Ops display room some years ago.)
Decoder Cabinet
Mr. Johannesson was given the task of designing the Decoder unit for that system which was to decode teletype messages from NORAD HQ in Colorado Springs and display the results on the theater screen.
FWC Layout As-Built Design Blueprints (used to reconstruct the configuration of the original room)
ICONORAMA Control Console (probably NORAD HQ)
Teletype used to received ICONORAMA coded information providing data fed into the Decoder Cabinet that was used to create situational status slides for display in the FWC
Simulated ICONORAMA Projection in Reconstructed Federal Warning Centre
Many of the US and Canadian HQs had ICONORAMA displays that were used by the military and civilians involved in vital decision making. I was shown an operational version as late as the mid-80s when I visited one of the US facilities (Mount Weather, Virginia). (The Carp FWC version was apparently disposed of in the late 60s), In the case of the Federal Warning Centre in the CEGHQ at Carp, the ICONORAMA image was projected to a screen at the front of a theatre-like room so that all of the decision input officials would be able to provide advice to the Federal Warning Officer (FWO) seated at the centre of the top row. The FWO would be responsible for initiating warning messages to Provincial Warning Officers located in various Regional HQs (usually associated the Provincial capitals) across the country. These warning messages would /could result in evacuations being ordered, stay put instructions being issued, sirens being sounded and many other measures being initiated.
The information on which the ICONORAMA display was based would have originated in NORAD HQs (Cheyanne Mountain in Colorado and/or North Bay, Ontario). It would have been assembled by those HQs from assessed intelligence and operational data flowing from many sources including the DEW, Mid Canada and McGill radar stations, from BMEWS inputs, etc. When received by the FWC teletypes, the message would have been decoded (in the Decoder Cabinet) and ‘scratched’ on a small 35 mm-type metalised foil slide. This ‘latest-information’ slide would then be projected on the front screen. This would then be superimposed on a base-map constantly displayed on the screen by another projector. The base-map would be the North American continent map with sector boundaries, and other such data displayed. (The ‘windows’ on back wall of the FWC are for these projectors…there would have been three or four of them). I believe that the slides would have been updated frequently, possibly as often as every five minutes to try to keep up with what would have been a very fluid battle situation.
