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title: "Thomas Pynchon, from S-Gerät to Y-Gerät"
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    feature: header_rocket.png
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One of the core plot devices (in so far as there is a plot) in Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel, _Gravity's Rainbow_, is the S-Gerät: the Schwarzgerät or "black device", made from the plastic Imipolex G.

While working on another project (on the history of television), I found a curious set of projects from the war, designated Y-Gerät and X-Gerät, which are part of the so-called [Battle of the Beams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams) but that, to my knowledge, haven't been explored in Pynchon scholarship.

"The German air force was operating a directional beam system called "Y-Gerät" aimed at the London area. It sent out two separate transmissions to fix the aircraft's bearing and range from the beacon." -- Abramson, Albert, The History of Television, 1880 to 1941 (Jefferson  N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1987), pp. 268-9.

I don't know what influence these had on Pynchon, if any. However, it's always fun to note an unspotted(?) real-world connection to this novel.