Let There Be More Light

Most of the information that reaches human consciousness is carried by light, and often the light provided by nature is not strong enough to register on human eyes. Scientists have long wanted some means of amplifying (strengthening) light without losing or distorting the information it brings. Last week Bendix Aviation Corp. demonstrated a device that amplifies light as much as 50,000 times.

Bendix's Lumicon is a sophisticated television apparatus. It has a camera tube that views a scene, such as a dimly lighted room, and translates it into a stream of electronic signals. Then a picture tube (with 1,029 "lines" of light instead of the usual 525) turns the signals into a reproduction of the scene in front of the camera. The big difference between the Lumicon and an ordinary TV setup is that the electronic signals are strengthened enormously, making the picture on the tube much brighter than the scene that the camera is viewing.

Varied Uses. This device, an obvious outgrowth of TV techniques, has been worked on by many designers. Inventors of the Lumicon are Physicist Ralph E. Sturm and Radiologist Russell H. Morgan, who did their work at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. Bendix bought their patents and hired Sturm to perfect the Lumicon and get it into production.

The original idea at Johns Hopkins was to find some way of brightening the dim X-ray shadows shown on fluoroscopes. If they are brightened by pouring more X rays through the patient, the effect on his health may not be good. With the Lumicon looking at the fluoroscope screen, a very faint picture, drawn by weak and harmless X rays, is made bright enough to show up clearly in a fully lighted room.

The Lumicon may have many varied uses. Bendix suggests it for night-watching areas that are too big to illuminate artificially. The surroundings of a prison, for instance, could be watched at night by Lumicon cameras reporting to a central station.

Mars Problem. Most romantic use of "light amplification" is in astronomy. The biggest telescopes do not magnify more than much smaller ones do; their purpose is to gather more light, making dim stars and nebulae bright enough to affect a photographic plate. Much the same result can be accomplished by amplifying dim light instead of gathering more of it. Dr. Albert G. Wilson, director of Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Ariz., believes that a 40-in. telescope equipped with a Lumicon will equal a 240-in. telescope in luminescence. The 200-in. Hale telescope on Palomar Mountain, the world's biggest, can be made to equal a 1,200-incher.

The Lumicon will get its most spectacular astronomical test when Mars comes near the earth late next summer. Astronomers have always been baffled and infuriated by Mars; even in their biggest telescopes it looks like a small, fuzzy, orange disk that jiggles around as irregularities in the earth's atmosphere affect the path of its light. Once in a great while the jiggling stops, and for an enchanted instant Mars stands still, its surface covered with fine and fascinating detail. These intervals of good "seeing," however, do not last long enough to be photographed, and the human eye-brain combination is not designed for recording much information instantaneously. So Mars observers seldom agree about what they have seen on Mars. The Lumicon and similar devices may end Martian privacy. Even a single good picture may tell whether there is any life on Mars.

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