The Cambridge Interferometer was a radio telescope

Radio telescope

A radio telescope is a form of directional radio antenna used in radio astronomy. The same types of antennas are also used in tracking and collecting data from satellites and space probes...

 interferometer

Astronomical interferometer

An astronomical interferometer is an array of telescopes or mirror segments acting together to probe structures with higher resolution by means of interferometry....

 built by Martin Ryle

Martin Ryle

Sir Martin Ryle was an English radio astronomer who developed revolutionary radio telescope systems and used them for accurate location and imaging of weak radio sources...

 and Antony Hewish

Antony Hewish

Antony Hewish FRS is a British radio astronomer who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974 for his work on the development of radio aperture synthesis and its role in the discovery of pulsars...

 in the early 1950s to the west of Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

 (between the Grange Road football ground and the current Cavendish Laboratory

Cavendish Laboratory

The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the university's School of Physical Sciences. It was opened in 1874 as a teaching laboratory....

). The interferometer consisted of an array of 4 fixed elements to survey the sky. It produced the two Cambridge catalogues of radio sources (the 2C catalogue of radio sources at 81.5 MHz, and the 3C

Third Cambridge Catalogue of Radio Sources

The Third Cambridge Catalogue of Radio Sources is an astronomical catalogue of celestial radio sources detected originally at 159 MHz, and subsequently at 178 MHz. It was published in 1959 by members of the Radio Astronomy Group of the University of Cambridge...

 catalogue of radio sources at 159 MHz, building on the work of the Preliminary survey of the radio stars in the Northern Hemisphere at 45 MHz - 214 MHz using the 2-element Long Michelson Interferometer

Long Michelson Interferometer

The Long Michelson Interferometer was a radio telescope interferometer built by Martin Ryle and co-workers in the late 1940s beside the rifle range to the west of Cambridge, England. The interferometer consisted of 2 fixed elements 440m apart to survey the sky using Earth rotation. It produced the ...

), discovering some of the most interesting astronomical objects known. The telescope was operated by the Radio Astronomy Group

Cavendish Astrophysics Group

The Cavendish Astrophysics Group is based at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. The group operates all of the telescopes at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory except for the 32m MERLIN telescope, which is operated by Jodrell Bank.The group is the second largest of three...

 of Cambridge University

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

.

Martin Ryle

Martin Ryle

Sir Martin Ryle was an English radio astronomer who developed revolutionary radio telescope systems and used them for accurate location and imaging of weak radio sources...

 and Antony Hewish

Antony Hewish

Antony Hewish FRS is a British radio astronomer who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974 for his work on the development of radio aperture synthesis and its role in the discovery of pulsars...

 received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974 for this and other related work.