The lab's activities included physical electronics, electromagnetic properties of matter, microwave physics, and microwave communication principles. Half of the radar deployed during World War II was designed at the RadLab, including over 100 different radar systems, and $1.5 billion worth of radar. At the height of its activities, the RadLab employed nearly 4,000 people working on several continents.
Much of the work at the RadLab was continued in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT.
With the cryptology and cryptographic efforts centered at Bletchley Park and Arlington Hall and, the Manhattan Project, the development of microwave radar at MIT's Radiation Lab represents one of few massive, secret, and outstandingly successful technological efforts spawned by the conflict of World War II.