Never Mind the Birdie

Even if you know nothing about camera technique, you may soon be taking clear, indoor snapshots of Junior. The Army Signal Corps has developed a parent-proof camera with built-in sunlight. All you have to do--indoors or outdoors, day or night--is focus on the subject and pull the trigger. The camera does the rest.

The new gadget is a ring-shaped, gas-filled flash tube around the lens. When the shutter opens, a whopping charge of electricity (2,000 volts) surges through the tube from a condenser, with a light as bright as the sun. The flash is so bright that the natural lighting of the subject doesn't matter. A child can move his head or blink his eyes without blurring the picture. The flash lasts only about one-25,000th of a second. Photographed at this speed, even the humming blades of an electric fan appear to be standing still.

The new camera was developed for the Surgeon General's Office, which wanted rapid, perfect, foolproof pictures of surgical operations. The inventors have great hopes for it. At present the gadget is a typical military job: too expensive and too heavy. The "power-pack" which provides the current weighs 27 Ibs. But by spring, it may be streamlined for the civilian market into a lighter, more practical model.

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