One day not long after he began his war work, Charles Townes was walking through Times Square when a complete stranger came up to him: “You’re not in uniform. Shame! A man your age ought to be in uniform, and helping out.”6 Townes was working fifty- and sixty-hour weeks to do precisely that. To the general public, however—largely unaware that this war would depend as much on technology as strategy—their role remained obscure.
