Word: vidicon
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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...Vidicon works on a new principle...
...them pass through. The transparent conducting layer collects the escaping electrons and passes them on in the form of a "video" current whose rapid fluctuations represent the light and shade of the picture. An ordinary television set turns the current into a copy of the scene which the Vidicon is viewing...
Compared with the image orthicon, which is packed with intricate entrails, the Vidicon is a dream-tube of electronic simplicity. It already sees well in ordinary indoor light, and RCA thinks that it can be made ten times as sensitive as the image orthicon. If so, the Vidicon should be able to see in near-darkness...
...develop the Vidicon primarily for house detectives and G-men. It was aiming at the important field of "industrial television," where the Vidicon will have vast importance. In the roaring, naming innards of modern industry there are many goings-on too dangerous for human eyes to watch. A cheap, expendable Vidicon can creep up close to a new machine being tested "to destruction." It can brave the flood of gamma rays from a nuclear reactor. It can ride on a guided missile or watch the detonating mechanism of an atomic bomb. Up to the time when it "dies," the faithful...
Less heroic jobs for the Vidicon may be even more useful. An array of the tubes can watch all the aisles of a factory for the plant manager. They can help store detectives keep multiple eyes on shoplifters. One watchman equipped with Vidicons can watch simultaneously many parts of his territory...