A Brief History of Bionic Sonars

Abstract

The word “bionics” is not a contraction of the words biology and electronics. The word was coined in 1959–60 by COL. Jack Steele to identify some of the programs at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (von Gierke 1986, private communication). The word comes from the Greek; bion is the unit of life in Greek and the ending ics indicates life-like. The U. S. Air Force stopped using the term when the TV shows “The Six Million Dollar Man” and “The Bionic Woman” were shown on ABC television (Hogan 1986). While the term “bionic sonar” means different things to different people, for the purposes of this discussion we will interpret it broadly to mean any attempt to build an electro-mechanical sonar using our knowledge of animal sonar systems.