oboe

The compass of the oboe.

Double-reed woodwind instrument with a conical bore and moderately flared bell, descended from the shawm. It is one of the four instruments that make up the woodwind section of the orchestra. The oboe was developed by the Hotteterre family of instrument makers in about 1700 and was played in the court ensemble of Louis XIV of France. Pitched in C, with a normal range of about 2 and a half octaves, it has a reedy and penetrating tone. This is why it is used at the beginning of concerts to sound the note A for the other players to tune their instruments. Oboe concertos have been composed by Antonio Vivaldi, Tomaso Albinoni, Richard Strauss, Bohuslav Martinu, and others. Heinz Holliger is a modern virtuoso oboist and important composer.

The oboe's most important close relative is the cor anglais, which sounds a fifth lower. Alto variants oboe d'amore (a minor third lower) and oboe da caccia (a fifth lower) are heard in the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and other 18th-century composers. They were replaced by the cor anglais in the modern orchestra. The rarely heard heckelphone is a baritone relative.

Oboe

British radar-based blind bombing system of World War II adopted by the RAF 1942.

It used two transmitters based in the UK; one tracked the bomber, guiding it on a course across the target. The other also tracked the bomber and ordered it to drop its bombs at the computed bomb-release point. Since accuracy was of a very high order, bombing became very accurate, and the system was used by the Pathfinder force to drop marker bombs for the rest of a bombing force.