[2] Helliwell was associated with Stanford University for his entire career, receiving all his academic credentials there and becoming a member of the electrical engineering faculty in 1946.
Helliwell and one of his students, Jack Mallinckrodt, were investigating lightning noise at very low radio frequencies at Stanford University in 1950.
[2] As Helliwell recalled in an article in the October 1982, issue of the Stanford Engineer, he thought it was an artifact, but he stood radio watch with Mallinckrodt until he heard these whistlers for himself.
Helliwell described these sounds as "weird, strange and unbelievable as flying saucers" in a 1954 article in the Palo Alto Times.
The antenna was used to transmit VLF radio signals into Earth's magnetosphere, to be detected half a world away in Canada.