Download Visualize The Future – Book Draft (2016)

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VISUALIZE the FUTURE
By
Jerry Flattum
Copyright 2005-2016
VISUALIZE the FUTURE:
Snapshot:
Wide
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Table of Contents
Preface to VISUALIZE the FUTURE
Angle: Intro to VISUALIZE the FUTURE
Rough Cut: At First Sight
Zoom In: Seeing the Big Bang
Filter: What We Don’t See
Pan: Capturing Life in the New Millennium
Close Up: Storytellers
Hollywood
 Hollywood’s Future: Sci-Fi vs. Science
 Hollywood Matures
 ILM: Industrial Light and Magic
 ILM’s Technology Timeline
 Pixar Animation Studios
 SGI: Silicon Graphics
 Hollywood and Science: A Love Story
 Hollywood’s Construction of Reality
 Suspension of Disbelief
 The Story
A Mixed View:
 Art
 Astrology
 Dreams
 Paranormal
 Cartoons
 Sex, Money and Violence
 Image: How Do I Look?
Electromagnetic Radiation: Light
Light as Energy
Photonics
Organic Light-emitting Devices (OLED)
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Vision
Color
 Color Temperature
 Filters
X-Ray
Lasers
 Holography
Optics in Everyday Life
Optics:
The Science
Light Microscopes
 Lens
 Mirrors
 Prisms and Beam Splitters
 Light Sources
 Fluorescence Microscopy
Electron Microscopes
Medical Imaging
 Nuclear Medicine
 Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
 Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT)
 Cardiovascular Imaging
 Bone Scanning
 Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
 Computerized Axial Tomography (CAT Scans)
Eye Glasses
 Contact Lenses
 Sunglasses
Surveillance
Telescopes
 Reflective Telescopes
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Refractors
Telescope Mounts
Eyepiece
Other Components
Optics in Review
Photography
 Photography: A Brief History
 Film
 Film Speed
 Developing Film
 Digital Cameras/Digital Images: Pixels, Resolution,
Formats
 Bit Depth
 File Formats
 Camcorders
 Movie Cameras
 The Clapper
 Mounting the Camera during a Shoot
 Long Shots and Close-ups
 Webcams
TV
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The Boob Tube
TV History
Convergence
Scientific Visualization
 Scientific Visualization: An Overview
 Visualization Methods
 Winter Simulation Conference
Virtual Reality
Sequel: What’s Next?
 Seeing with Thought, Seeing with Feeling
 Friends and Strangers: Seeing Eye to Eye
 Behind Closed Doors
 What’s Next?
Appendix A:
more)
History of Computer Graphics (and a whole lot
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1200 – 1959
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
New Millennium
Appendix B:
Moviemaking
A Sampling of CG Software Programs Used in
Appendix C:
Special Effects Glossary (partial)
Appendix D:
Famous Names in Optics (not a complete list)
Appendix E:
Websites
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Snap Shot: VISUALIZE the FUTURE
Visualize the Future explores how humankind visually sees
and interprets the universe.
Visualize the Future "looks" at how a wide range of
visualization methods used to interpret and understand the
universe and ourselves. The spectrum of visualization
methods ranges from primitive cave drawings to art,
electron microscopy to telescopes, photography to movies,
dreams to the paranormal, and optics to CGI used in
scientific modeling and simulation.
How we visualize the universe spans across a wide spectrum
of disciplines. The list ranges from media (movies, TV,
CD/DVD, games, the Internet, virtual reality) to science
(telescopes, microscopes, modeling, simulation, even
astrology), to the arts (performance, paintings, drawings,
sculpture), to our views in politics, religion, education
and commerce.
Visualize the Future surveys the various analog and digital
hardware, software, methods and tools used by the various
disciplines to produce images (and sounds). More
importantly, the book investigate how these various
disciplines use images to interpret, understand, and
ultimate persuade people to “see” a certain way.
Exploration into the visual includes how we see ourselves-looking inside our minds--and a look into the things we
can’t see (death, outerspace, the future).
Since antiquity, we’ve used a number of devices and
techniques to visualize the future, from crystal balls and
tarot cards to the latest virtual reality. Prophecy has
played an important role in human development, in
everything from anticipating “the coming of the Lord” to
wartime strategies to predicting stock market swings.
Virtual reality, 3D modeling and other Internet
technologies allow us to create virtual worlds and virtual
communities. Through role playing, we can be someone other
than ourselves, offering a decidedly different perspective
other than our own.
Mindreading, parallel universes, and the paranormal are
other ways we try and see that which we cannot see. These
excursions into the world of seeing are not quite as
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mathematical as the modeling and simulation software used
in such areas as military strategy, weather forecasting,
space exploration, population analysis, ecological change
or even chaos and complexity. But, they are no less
important.
A number of themes run throughout Visualize the Future.
These themes intersect and diverge. These themes include
storytelling in Hollywood, reality vs. fantasy, what we see
and what we don’t see, science and art, and optics in
everyday life. These themes interweave in a kaleidoscope
of color and light, influencing how we see ourselves and
how we see our future.
An important note: Much of the historical and technical
information in Visualize the Future is the result of online
research. In some instances, information was extracted and
then rewritten and/or edited. Nearly all the websites are
authoritative websites of manufacturers, educational
institutions and government organizations.
However, dates, in particular, do not always gel, as well
as who invented what, when and where. Consequently,
information is accurate, up to a point. Visualize the
Future is not meant to be the definitive source on the
subjects covered. If there was a discrepancy in the dates,
a phrase like “In the early 80s” or “In the late 17th
century” were used instead.
The SIGGRAPH history of computer graphics doesn’t reflect
all the subjects covered in the book, but does cover most
media events, computer developments and some optics
milestones in addition to computer graphics. It’s an
inspirational timeline, nonetheless.
All the subjects covered in Visualize the Future are
complex enough to warrant their own libraries, if not
entire universities dedicated to research on any given
subject. The goal is to inspire.
Otherwise, the rest of Visualize the Future is pure
speculation. The ultimate purpose is to inspire new ways
of visualizing the future of human evolution and discover—
or re-discover—the maze of visualization tactics we use to
communicate.
Profound credit is due to the numerous companies,
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organizations, websites, artists, technicians and writers,
dedicated to finding new ways to help better see the world,
the universe and ourselves…and make the world a better
place.
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Wide Angle: Intro to Visualize the Future
Shadows dance. Intense rays burn rock into dust. Cosmic
radiation warps time and gives stars their twinkle.
Rainbows hide in prisms. A fire burns. A mirror breaks.
A bulb needs replacing. Even mystical lakes in fairytales
reflect the sad face of a princess in search of her long,
lost love.
Light. We need it to see. Our eyes take light and convert
the universe into a paradise of image. Some even think God
is light. Ancient Egyptians once worshiped the sun. Now,
in the New Millennium, scientists are working on turning
light into power.
How we see the world ranges from microscopes to telescopes
to what we see inside our minds. And everyone sees things
differently.
Light can play many tricks on our eyes...or is it our
perceptions? The thrust behind exploring the world of
visualization is really an exploration in reality vs.
fantasy. The manipulation of reality is as easy as the
manipulation of a photograph in Adobe’s Photoshop.
Take the movie, Jurassic Park, for instance. We don’t know
what a dinosaur looks like, obviously, because no one has
ever seen one. We rely on our current natural world and
the insight of Paleontologists to give us the most likely
scenario. After years of reconstructing dinosaurs from
bones and the age in which they lived, paleontologists,
archeologists, historians, and even philosophers and
artists have done a pretty good job, we assume, of painting
an accurate picture.
Steven Spielberg consulted a number of scientists and
academicians before bringing dinosaurs to the screen. All
along the route of recreation was a host of experts,
writers, and graphic artists who provided a constant check
and balance against what could and couldn’t be. Common
sense certainly played a role. Its unlikely dinosaurs were
pink or paisley, or ran upside down, or spoke a language.
But then again, in Hollywood, anything is possible. A
talking pink dinosaur is not completely out of the
question.
But seeing is far more subtle--and complex--than seeing a
physical object or representation of a physical object.
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How we “see” the world is what we call our “worldview.”
When we look at the past or the future, some see triumph,
others see disaster. Some people have wildly vivid
imaginations. Others see the world in terms of black and
white.
Some people look at the world through satellites floating
in Outerspace. Others peer through microscopes at things
billionths of nanometers small. Some claim they’ve seen
“the coming of the Messiah” while still others claim they
see nothing but evil in the world.
What we can’t see with our eyes we see with our
imaginations, and our emotions as well. There is no more
powerful tool for visualization than the imagination. With
imagination, we can see events before they happen. We can
practice doing something before actually doing it, so we
don’t get hurt. Flight simulators serve this purpose.
What we can’t see, we can model and simulate, like weather
patterns or the universe expanding (or contracting). We
can also act out our sexual fantasies without breaking
anyone’s moral code.
Again, the overriding question is, “Is the world what we
see with our own eyes or is it what we see in our minds?”
In crime, lawyers, judges and juries rely on witness
testimonies and evidence to determine guilt or innocence.
Sometimes witnesses lie; sometimes they are unsure of what
they saw. Evidence can be circumstantial. Abuse cases are
particularly troublesome since rarely does anyone ever see
an abuser in action. Physical wounds can heal before they
are photographed. And emotional abuse can’t be
photographed…not yet, anyway.
In journalism, journalists strive to be objective. The
information they provide must come from reliable sources.
But news organizations are well known for their “slant,”
often depicted in terms of liberal or conservative. And
everyone knows liberals and conservatives most definitely
do not see eye-to-eye. Some reporting agencies are biased,
and in many instances, under harsh scrutiny, are clearly
prejudiced.
Cultural differences are the most problematic. It is
within the realm of culture that legends, myths and beliefs
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are the tools used to describe that which we cannot
see...like God. Terrorism in the name of religion is
clearly an expression of how world cultures see things
differently. However, terrorism doesn’t work. An act of
terrorism does not help us see the other side of an
argument. In fact, it blinds us. We are not persuaded; we
are horrified.
We live in a media-saturated culture. Children are
endlessly bombarded with images ranging from depictions of
Santa Claus to Daffy Duck getting his beak blown off in a
cartoon. Get a little older and cartoons turn into video
games. Video games turn into computer screens, TV and the
movies. And anything channeled through a media device is
manipulated. It is not reality; it is a representation of
reality, even with real life documentaries and “reality” TV
shows.
Most urban environments are but a fragment of what was once
indigenous. We have so altered the landscape that many
people have completely lost touch with what nature really
looks like. We’ve turned deserts into resorts, removed
mountains, and changed the course of rivers. It’s a wonder
the sea isn’t colored chartreuse.
The views of science are as intriguing and dramatic as
anything Hollywood creates, maybe even more so. What does
a nanotube look like, something only billionths of a meter
long or high? Without an accurate measuring stick, it’s
impossible to see a “meter” yet alone a “nanometer.”
Looking outward, no one knows what the “Big Bang” looked
like. We don’t even know what a meteor falling to earth
looks like since it happens in seconds and we could never
be close enough to witness the impact.
And then there’s intelligent design. God is almost always
referred to as “he.” Since no one has ever seen God, then
obviously “he” is a projected image. Then again, some
people will say they see God in everything. Referring to
God as “she” is still considered a joke in most circles,
something only a comedian or irate feminist would say.
God is certainly not a transsexual, the suggestion of which
would be considered an act of heresy by many. God could
also be black or white. The “he” reference leaves so much
to be desired. Is “he” a child, an old man, or does “he”
look like Arnold Schwarzenegger? Or is God not a person at
all, but a force; an invisible force we cannot see, but
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only imagine?
Some things in life happen too fast, too faraway, in the
past or future, or behind rock so thick not even Superman
can see with X-ray vision. We send probes into Outerspace
and into the earth’s crust to do our looking for us. We
use time-lapse photography to show us how things look as
they change over time. Our vision is limited. We need
pictures. We need tools.
There are two myths this exploration into the visual realm
will help destroy. First, there is the belief that “Every
picture tells a story.” Two, “A picture says 1000 words.”
Sure, pictures tell stories, but what stories? Anyone who
has ever lighted a subject in a photography studio or
worked with a graphics program like Photoshop knows to what
extent pictures can be altered.
When it comes to moving pictures, Hollywood has no qualms
about spending millions of dollars to shape a 30 second
scene precisely according to a director’s “vision.” When
it comes to a 1000 words, in the news, it’s not often what
the camera sees but what it doesn’t that tells the “real”
story, or the “other side” of the story.
In other words, how many of us are living in fantasy worlds
and don’t even know it?
A popular theme running through many college curriculums is
the “deconstruction of reality.” In simpler terms, the
theme is an attempt to cut through the “hype.” But then,
just what is hype? How has the advertising community used
imagery to influence us as consumers? How have history
books used words, pictures and drawings to portray
characters and events from the past? How do Whites see
Blacks and Blacks see Whites? Is the suicide bomber from
Iraq a terrorist or freedom fighter?
There are other myths such as, “I’ll believe it when I see
it,” or, “I won’t believe it until I can hold it in my
hands,” and “Seeing is believing.” Few poets would argue
that the more people who can “see with their hearts,” a
better place the world would be.
The tools for visualization in the 21st century have become
quite sophisticated. From electron microscopes to camera
probes on distant planets, from 3D architectural rendering
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and war simulation software to digital art and webcams-it’s safe to say, we want to see everything.
Yet, the biggest question of all: How do we see the
future? What does the future look like to someone who’s
blind? How will the world look to a blind person fitted
with artificially-intelligent eyes? What exactly are we
seeing or not seeing that determines a positive or negative
outlook? What blocks our vision? Is it intelligence? Is
it hate? Is it fear? Or is it alcohol and drugs? And,
nothing obscures the vision more than when we are hurting.
Being free from pain allows us to see things more clearly,
and if not, at least more positively.
Rough Cut: At First Sight
The world’s oldest known cave paintings were discovered in
the Fumane Cave in northern Italy, near Verona, according
to a BBC news article. The paintings are between 32,000 and
36,500 years old. In another article, an archeological
team found pigments and paint grinding equipment in a cave
at Twin Rivers, near Lusaka, Zambia, believed to be between
350,000 and 400,000 years old.
According to a University of California—Berkeley 2003 press
release, the fossilized skulls of two adults and one child
were discovered in the Afar region of eastern Ethiopia,
dated at 160,000 years. The press release further claims
the skulls as the oldest known fossils of modern humans, or
Homo sapiens.
Apparently paint outlasts bones, an eerie foreshadowing of
humankind’s current obsession for documenting everything in
sight. Foreshadow begets irony. We now bury deep within
the earth’s surface and send far into Outerspace, select
items “we” think will best represent what human beings are
or were like…you know, for aliens and other people of the
future.
Zoom In: Seeing the Big Bang
Contrast the archeological discoveries with the current
scientific need to not only explain the Big Bang, but to
see it. Science—and just about anyone, for that matter—
wants desperately to see the past. The mission of the NASA
Explorer project, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe
(WMAP), is to reveal conditions as they existed in the
early universe by measuring the properties of the cosmic
microwave background radiation over the full sky. WMAP
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data is allegedly accurate in telling the age of our
universe within a 1% margin of error. Keeping decimal
places to a minimum, the answer is: 13.7 billion years
old.
What scientists and all their data fail to see, is that we—
the masses—have a difficult time “seeing” the big bang.
What does cosmic microwave background radiation look like?
We hardly remember yesterday yet alone imagining life 13
plus billion years ago. What’s even worse is when the 3.7
billion number is misprinted. Would we really know the
difference between 3.7 and 4.7 billion?
Filter: What We Don’t See
Skulls that are 160,000 years old? Cave paintings 35,000
years old? Somehow a skull just doesn’t help visualize
what the rest of the person looked like, and it certainly
doesn’t tell us anything about personality, thoughts,
dreams, jobs and love affairs. Well, they really didn’t
have jobs back then, so they say. Back then humans spent
most of the time questing for fire and fighting
dinosaurs…so they say.
Dinosaurs, by the way, date back 230 million years or so,
give or take a day. They went extinct about 65 million
years ago. Theories abound, but the most popular
explanation for dinosaur extinction was a meteorite.
A meteorite so powerful it can knock out a whole range of
species…now that’s something to see.
Prehistoric cave paintings are often enigmatic and subject
to much interpretation. Some drawings resemble four-legged
beasts while others look like human figures with animal
heads. Is that what they really look like? Isn’t it more
like a Rorschach test?
The Rorschach test—now there’s an interesting way to view
the world around us.
Fast forward—a visualization technique in itself—we rip
through the centuries to find humankind becoming quite
adept at capturing and reflecting the world visually. In
paintings and drawings, visual expression was static; there
were no moving pictures. Sculpture and architecture gave
us a more dynamic 3D, if not 4th and 5th dimensional.
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Ancient ruins scattered across the globe are treasures for
anyone’s eyes. What do they tell us about the past? What
hints do we glimpse of the future? We might see a moment
in time, but how do we see the passage of time?
Prehistoric bones and other broken relics of the past never
tell the full story. Paintings—as remarkable works of art
though they might be—really don’t fare much better in
storytelling. A painting of a queen tells us nothing of
how she moved or talked. In ruins—as remarkable works of
art though they might be—tell us nothing of rooms, tunnels
and trap doors that may have existed, holding secrets no
one will ever know. We can’t hear the countless
conversations that took place on stoned benches or in
gardens...or behind closed doors.
Pan: Capturing Life in the New Millennium
It really wasn’t until the 20th century we began developing
techniques for permanently archiving the past. Chemically
treated paintings in temperature controlled rooms allow
countless works of fine art to last far beyond what nature
intended. Nearly every photo, graphic, drawing, blueprint
and technical rendering is now digitized. Once digitized,
it is then backed up, if not more than once. And now,
nanotechnologically-coated buildings will last eons.
Our system for preservation isn’t perfect. In 2005, a
hurricane like Katrina demonstrated how everything can be
wiped out in a matter of hours. The city of New Orleans
was never backed up. There is no replica. And very few
companies or individuals were savvy enough to back up their
files in a distant location in the event of such a natural
catastrophe.
Since the disaster, there are plenty of photos and movies
enough so that we really don’t need to see the whole thing.
We don’t need to re-experience the whole thing to know what
it was like. But, a video capture of a corpse floating
down the flooded streets of New Orleans tells a different
story than another video capture of an old woman being
rescued from a burning house by a heroic firefighter.
So whatever pictures, graphics, photos, films and other
renderings we have, there still remains the question of
what exactly do they all represent? Do we get a visual of
how the world really is at a given moment, or is it how we
interpret such reproductions?
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Only the architect really knows how the building will look
from a blueprint rendering. Usually the architect builds a
scaled model, so others can see what a structure will look
like.
Architecture goes far beyond mere single structures. There
are planned communities, city expansion, highway networks
and transcontinental optical and satellite networks. For
every one person who is capable of “drawing” up such a vast
plan, the rest of us sit back and watch.
So, most of the world around us is an expression of very
few visionaries in contrast to the masses. If asked, no
doubt most of us would have an opinion on at least one
place a road should go or what color a particular building
should be. But, seldom are most of us ever asked about how
we “see” things.
Close Up: Storytellers
Whatever holes in history remain unfilled by ruins,
paintings and chipped fossils, words come to the rescue.
Our world is deeply enriched by literature old and new.
Whether it’s the Bible, Faust, Aesop’s Fables, Alice in
Wonderland, War and Peace, To Kill a Mockingbird or Harry
Potter, wordsmiths have shaped our view of the world far
beyond the limits of our own imaginations.
The enduring question is: At what price has reality been
sacrificed? We’ve got cave paintings, skulls, relics,
broken architecture and now fanciful words to weave exotic
tales. But do we really see what was or what is?
In the Digital Age, it seems ironic illiteracy would be a
major global issue. Poverty and lack of resources explains
most of the 3rd world illiteracy problems. But it’s the
media that explains why so many people in the Industrial
and Digital Age are unable to read anything much beyond a
newspaper headline. Well, that’s the critical view.
Worldwide sales for the Harry Potter series of books—7 in
total—has reached the 250 million mark. The seventh book,
as of early 2006, has yet to be published. Of course, J.K.
Rowling’s imaginative tales of a young wizard amounts to
nothing short of a phenomenon. Still, the publishing
industry shows no signs of slowed growth. In fact, thanks
to the Internet, particularly websites like Amazon.com,
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book sales have increased, eBooks are read on laptops and
self-publishing has become a cottage industry.
Plus, the Google search engine claims to search over 4
billion web pages, most of which are comprised of text.
When language began is a controversial debate. Some say it
started from day one, in the Garden of Eden. Others say
150,000 years ago, when humans were ape-like, beating their
chests and uttering animal sounds. Since we don’t know, we
can only imagine.
When we can’t imagine, and when fragmented rocks, bits of
bones and time-worn cave paintings leave us wanting, it is
the storyteller who paints the picture for us.
Ancient storytellers were once the only form of
entertainment around. From African witchdoctors to
American Indian wise men, from Aesop to grandpa sitting
around a campfire, these word-of-mouth storytellers gave us
an engaging way to remember past events and pass them on to
new generations. But, as we all know, storytellers have a
tendency to fib a little…you know, stretch the truth for
dramatic purposes.
In the new millennium, storytelling is big business. New
technologies like DVD, the Internet, supercomputers,
satellite/wireless and nanotechnology allow for the
transmission and storage of huge amounts of visual/audio
data across a global network. From digital film (an
oxymoron) to computer simulations, from text descriptions
to mathematical formulas, we’ve captured just about
everything.
We can see the universe expanding. We can see a cell
forming. We can look out across millions of light-years
and watch matter crash into anti-matter. We can see war,
poverty, disease and crime. We watch graphs that help us
predict earthquakes and hurricanes. We simulate
battlefield scenarios during the development of new
weapons.
The problem is that we humans just don’t see eye-to-eye on
certain things. Sometimes we’re not sure what we see. Was
it a foggy night? Are you sure the license plate read UFH443 and not UFF-887? When you heard the shot, did it sound
like it came from in the house or the shed? Did you happen
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to take a picture of the “thing” you saw flying across the
sky?
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Hollywood
Hollywood’s Future: Sci-Fi vs. Science
Credit goes to Hollywood for influencing the way most
people in the new millennium view the future. Even when
those visions are “cheesy” (a reference usually to the old
“B” movies of the 50s and 60s) they still affected the
imagination. In movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still
(1951), War of the Worlds (1953 George Pal version), and
even Abbot and Costello Go to Mars (1953), special effects
capabilities were considerably limited by today’s
standards. It was the days of flying plates with cups in
the center and bad actors covered in green paint. Well, it
wasn’t that bad.
At the time, some of these movies were not considered
cheesy but innovative. Filmmakers began to look at the
future and the realm of sci-fi with relative seriousness.
War of the Worlds, directed by George Pal, won an Oscar for
its special effects. George Pal was to the 50s what
Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg and George Lukas are to
the 70s and now (2006).
But, we need to go back farther than the 50s when it comes
to sci-fi master visions of the future. H.G. Well’s, The
Time Machine, was published in 1898. As much as we take
his novel for granted in the 21st century, it’s important to
realize just how “visionary” Well’s was in a time of no
cars and streets lit by gas lights, yet alone time
machines.
Jules Verne preceded Wells in his 1864 novel, Voyage to the
Center of the Earth, a year before Lewis Carroll’s, Alice
in Wonderland. Alice in Wonderland is considered more
fantasy than sci-fi, although the line between the two
genres is often a thin one. In The Time Machine, we
actually traveled into the future. But other sci-fi
visions were more imaginings of the time or no time in
particular, rather than prophetic visions of the future.
It was a “vision” of the way things could be now—now, being
a relative term.
Of course, visions of the future are by no means solely
credited to fiction writers and moviemakers. Writers and
movie makers were—and still are—more like ambassadors for
the scientists and innovators who plot and plan for a
changing world. Leonardo da Vinci was fooling around with
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flying machines in the 1400s. And long before that, Plato
was envisioning utopia in his imaginary city of Magnesia
(Plato’s, Republic, and other works by Plato).
Hollywood Matures
Now Hollywood has grown up, and the special effects (F/X)
used in the New Millennium rival the most advanced
scientific technologies of the day. In fact Hollywood—or
more accurately the world of filmmaking—has been
instrumental in the development of new visualization
techniques and tools. Director George Lukas’s use of a
full motion camera in 1977 during the making of Star Wars
was as innovative as stop motion animation was in the early
1900s.
Willis O’Brien was a stop motion pioneer as early as 1916,
but it was his innovative work in King Kong (1933) that put
him on the F/X map. O’Brien’s work led to Ray Harryhausen,
who lifted stop motion to new levels in the film, Jason and
the Argonauts (1963). Of course, credit must also be given
to Greek Mythology for the tales of Jason, the Argonauts
and the Golden Fleece.
Behind Hollywood movies is a technological backbone of
immense strength and power. Innovation comes from numerous
companies like Disney and Stan Winston, to the 1000s of
artists and technicians that make things happen. Three
companies that best represent this backbone are Industrial
Light and Magic (ILM), Pixar Animation Studios, and Silicon
Graphics (SGI).
ILM: Industrial Light and Magic
Following a stream of lesser known successors and born out
of the success of Star Wars, George Lukas launched
Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) in the late 70s. ILM’s
Computer Division is responsible for a slew of advances in
digital imaging, electronic editing, and interactivity.
Improving on the 3-D camera techniques of the 1950s and the
1960s, powerful tools were needed. Lucas built the
framework for computer animation and special effects (F/X),
and continues to push barriers through the new millennium.
The success of Star Wars changed movie history. Since its
release, seldom is there a movie produced without some kind
of computer-generated F/X. Computers became not only
integral to how films were made and produced, but even
conceived.
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ILM’s Technology Timeline
Note: Not all technical achievements are listed.
1977
Star Wars marked the first use of a motion control camera.
1979
Lucas sets up ILM’s Computer Division to explore new uses
of computers for digital imaging, electronic editing, and
interactivity.
1982
The “Genesis sequence” for Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan,
marks the first completely computer-generated sequence.
1984
Lucasfilm pioneers disc-based computerized electronic
nonlinear editing for picture and sound and premiered
EditDroid and SoundDroid at the National Association of
Broadcasters conference.
1985
The first completely computer-generated character is
created with the “stained glass man” in Young Sherlock
Holmes.
1986
Lucas sells off the rendering software portion of ILM’s
Computer Division. The spin-off becomes the leading
animation company in the world, Pixar Animation.
1988
The first morphing sequence for motion pictures in created
for the movie, Willow. ILM wins technical achievement
awards for the development of Morf, a computer-graphics
program allowing the fluid, onscreen transformation of one
object to another.
1989
The first computer generated three-dimensional character,
“pseudopod,” debuts in The Abyss.
1991
The first computer graphics generated lead character is
created with the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
21
Skywalker Sound introduces the first utilization of T-1
tie-lines for real-time digital audio transmission to
distant locations.
1993
ILM wins its 12th Academy Award for computer graphics work
on Death Becomes Her and its fifth Academy Technical
Achievement Award. The Award marks the first time human
skin texture is computer generated.
Avid Technology acquired the EditDroid and SoundDroid
technologies and joined forces with Lucasfilm to develop
and produce the next generation of digital picture and
sound editing systems.
Lucas Digital Ltd. and Silicon Graphics formed an exclusive
alliance to create JEDI, a unique networked environment for
digital production. JEDI is a beta test sight for Silicon
Graphics equipment and allows the artists and technicians
at ILM to advise SGI on future developments.
1994
ILM wins its 13th Academy Award for work on the computergenerated dinosaurs for Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park
and its sixth Academy Technical Achievement Award for
pioneering work on film digitization. Digital technology
is used for the first time to create a living, breathing
dinosaur with skin, muscles, texture, movement and
personality.
1995
ILM wins its 14th Academy Award for its breakthrough work
on Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump features a slew of
breakthroughs such as the seamless integration of
historical documentary footage, computer-generated jets,
helicopters, birds, crowds, and even ping-pong balls
bouncing back and forth during a playoff.
An Oscar nomination is won for the first photo-real cartoon
character in The Mask. ILM turns a human being into a
cartoon character.
The first fully synthetic speaking characters with distinct
personalities and emotions are created for the movie,
Casper. The ghost characters garnish more than 40 minutes
of screen time.
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The first computer-generated photo-realistic hair and fur
are created for the digital lion and monkeys in Jumanji.
The stampede scene, featuring dozens of elephants, rhinos,
zebras and pelicans, were all computer-generated.
1996
ILM wins another Technical Achievement Award for pioneering
work in digital film compositing.
In Mission: Impossible, the first fully virtual set is
used for the climactic action sequence, requiring a
computer-generated train speeding through a computergenerated tunnel followed by a computer-generated
helicopter. Actors were digitally composited into the
virtual set to complete the scene.
Twister’s Digital tornadoes in Twister were entirely
computer-generated using particle systems animation
software.
ILM’s proprietary facial animation software gives life to
the 3D digital character Draco in Dragonheart.
1997
Two more Technical Achievement Awards are earned for the
creation and development of the Direct Input Device used by
stop-motion animators and for the development of a system
to create and control computer-generated hair and fur.
ILM gets a Scientific and Engineering Award for the
development of the Viewpaint 3D Paint System. The system
allows artists to color and texture details to computergenerated effects. This is the 12th Scientific and
Engineering award won by ILM.
Skywalker Sound installs the Capricorn, manufactured by AMS
Neve, the largest digital audio console at any audio postproduction facility in the world.
Soundtrack mixes for Contact and Titanic earn Academy Award
nominations for best sound.
Utilizing more sound elements (including dialogue loops and
sound effects) than any feature film in history, Titanic
wins an Oscar for best sound combined with best awards from
Motion Picture Sound Editors and Cinema Audio Society.
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1998
ILM secures two patents for proprietary techniques. One for
“hair, fur and feathers,” illustrated in the groundbreaking
images of the computer-generated gorilla in Mighty Joe
Young. The other patent was awarded for the facial
animation software initially developed in 1995 for Casper.
Newer versions were used in Men in Black and other movies.
Saving Private Ryan earns Skywalker Sound two Academy
Awards for best sound and sound effects editing. It’s the
most realistic soundtrack ever used for a battle scene.
1999
The facial animation software “Caricature,” having already
been awarded a patent, is given a boost with ILM’s latest
Technical Achievement Award.
The award states: “By integrating existing tools into a
powerful interactive system, and adding an expressive
multi-target shape interpolation-based freeform animation
system, the Caricature system provided a degree of subtlety
and refinement not possible with other systems.”
ILM’s camera department received a Technical Achievement
Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
(AMPAS) for pioneering work in motion-controlled, silent
dollies.
The Mummy featured the most realistic digital human
character ever seen in film.
90% of George Lucas’s Star Wars: Episode I “The Phantom
Menace” featured digital effects shots. Synthetic
environments, digital terrain generation, computer graphic
lead characters and 1000s of digital extras are completely
computer-generated. ILM wins an Academy Award nomination
for best achievement in visual effects.
2000
ILM wins a BAFTA Award for best special visual effects, and
a nomination for an Academy Award for best achievement in
visual effects, for the digital waves and weather created
for the movie, The Perfect Storm.
2001
ILM creates the first real-time interactive on-set
visualization process allowing filmmakers to place actors
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in virtual sets providing complete freedom with camera
moves. Steven Spielberg uses the same process in A.I.:
Artificial Intelligence. ILM earns another Academy Award
nomination for best achievement in visual effects.
Another nomination is given out for the attack scenes in
Pearl Harbor, featuring digitally manifested World War II
era airplanes and ships together with the fire and smoke
generated from all the explosions.
2002
Two more Technical Achievement Awards, numbers 15 and 16,
are earned for the creation and development of ILM’s
proprietary Motion and Structure Recovery System (MARS) and
ILM’s Creature Dynamics System.
The release of Star Wars: Episode II “Attack of the
Clones” marks the first major motion picture to be shot
completely on digital HD video.
2003
With the release of The Hulk, ILM creates a digital human
character with (green) skin, hair, muscles, clothing,
personality and emotions in the Hulk.
Pixar Animation Studios
Pixar started as the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Group in
1979, which was reorganized in 1983 to become Pixar and a
games division. It focused on software development, but
also designed and developed hardware in house. The Pixar
Image Computer, which was intended for the high-end
visualization markets such as medicine, was eventually
sold. The commercial group worked in the advertising area,
and was discontinued in 1995.
Pixar was purchased by Steve Jobs from Lucasfilm in 1986.
As part of the deal, Lucasfilm retained rights to access to
the Pixar technology. Software created by Pixar includes
REYES (Renders Everything You Ever Saw,) CAPS (with
Disney), Marionette, an animation software system that
allows animators to model and animate characters and add
lighting effects, and Ringmaster, which is production
management software that schedules, coordinates, and tracks
a computer animation project.
The applications development group worked to convert the
REYES technology to the RenderMan product, which was
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commercialized in 1989. It received Academy Technical
Awards in 1992 for CAPS (1992), RenderMan (1993), digital
scanning technology (1995), Marionette and digital painting
(1997), and for laser film recording technology (1999).
Pixar is well known for a series of short film productions,
including Luxo Jr. (1986), Red’s Dream (1987), Tin Toy
(1988), KnickKnack (1989), Geri’s Game (1997), and One Man
Band (2005). It won Oscars for Tin Toy in 1988 (Luxo Jr.
was nominated in 1986) and Geri’s Game in 1998. The
company has won several Academy Technical Achievement
awards, Golden Globes, and Clio’s, and been awarded a
number of U.S patents.
Pixar is especially well known for its animated featurelength films. In 1995, Pixar created the immensely popular
movie, Toy Story. In 1998 the animated feature, A Bug’s
Life, set box office records. Other major successes
followed, like Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters, Inc. (2001),
and Finding Nemo (2003), and the Incredibles (2004). The
film recording technology mastered by hardware guru David
DeFrancisco is being incorporated into a revolutionary new
laser film recorder called PixarVision.
From December 14, 2005 to February 6, 2006, The Museum of
Modern Art presented a special exhibit, “Pixar: 20 Years of
Animation.” The major exhibit featured work by the artists
of Pixar Animation Studios that brought together all of
Pixar’s feature films and shorts. Numerous other artists
contributed paintings, sculptures and other works of art
using themes from Pixar films. Pixar artists work in
traditional media-hand drawings, painting, sculpture, and
CGI to create their films.
The Museum of Modern Art has a long history of presenting
exhibitions of animation art and animation screening. The
Department of Film and Media was founded in the 1930s,
starting with the exhibit, A Short History of Animation:
The Cartoon 1879-1933. Gallery exhibitions have included
Walt Disney’s Bambi: The Making of an Animated Sound Film
(1942), That’s Not All Folks! Warner Bros. Animation (198586), and Designing Magic: Disney Animation Art (1995).
Most recently, MOMA presented the animation film series,
Anime!! (2005) and Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata:
Masters of Animation (2005).
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SGI: Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics (SGI) is perhaps the leading maker of
simulation, modeling and animation software and hardware,
combining high-performance computing and data management
technologies with advanced visualization capabilities. The
world’s leading companies and institutions employ SGI
technology. SGI caters to virtually every industry.
SGI is best known for work done with Hollywood’s special
effects studios. Silicon Graphics has a 20-year history in
the entertainment and production markets, helping to
popularize 3D graphics and animation with advances in
OpenGL and API-compliant graphics hardware and in the power
of personal desktop computers. Silicon Graphics
visualization systems provide editing, compositing, and
film mastering and restoration applications in media.
These solutions are changing the way new films are made and
older titles are re-mastered.
The SGI Media Server for broadcast is designed with an
understanding of the needs for managing both video and data
in a broadcast facility. Superior LAN/WAN media
distribution is a key element. Broadcast system
integration services include customer qualification, site
planning assistance, hardware installation, network
configuration, connection of peripheral devices, software
configuration, and integration with third-party systems.
SGI is the best example of the convergence of science and
entertainment. The entertainment industry and scientific
community use the same SGI applications.
Many diagnostic imaging devices and computer-aided surgical
tools in use today are powered by SGI computers, such as
MRI, CT, Computer-guided surgery devices, and surgery
simulators. SGI products have delivered reliable
performance in a multitude of health care environments,
from radiology departments to university research centers.
Security features (standard to the IRIX operating system)
provide answers to the requirements for healthcare
information privacy.
A dedicated in-house team of medical industry experts,
medical physicists, physicians, and engineers coordinates
the efforts of SGI in the medical market space. SGI
focuses on three areas: diagnostic imaging, medical image
management and communications, and computer-aided surgery
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and simulation. SGI has long-standing working
relationships with the medical industry’s leading
manufacturers and software providers.
Tools include scalable computational servers, highperformance storage, and advanced 3D visualization combined
with robust and leading-edge application software.
Research centers and universities around the world use SGI
technologies to store, process, and interpret massive data
sets.
Large data questions produce bigger data answers that
strain the human ability to understand the answer in order
to ask the next question. SGI’s comprehensive
visualization solutions allow researchers to see their
data, understand it quickly, and formulate new questions in
a timely fashion. Visualization of data allows for
unequalled collaborative interpretation and decision
making.
Solutions include SGI’s proprietary Silicon Graphics Prism,
Silicon Graphics Onyx4, Universal access to advanced
visualization with Visual Area Networking, and group
collaboration with SGI Reality Center.
SGI provides solutions for science centers, planetariums,
and museums. Applications allow people to explore the
universe, cruise along a strand of DNA, stroll into a
virtual model of an Egyptian tomb, and examine minute
details of priceless works of art--interactively. There
are many other “virtual space” applications.
These compelling and educational applications, described as
experiential computing, are made possible by unique SGI
visualization technology. Experiential computing is
defined as the combination of high-resolution imagery,
real-time interactivity, and immersive visualization.
SGI Reality Center Advanced Visualization Facilities
deliver the highest realism and performance possible for
collaborative visualization. Reality Center facilities
provide real-time, highly interactive working solutions for
design review and engineering, complex data analysis,
critical and/or hazardous training, sales and marketing,
scientific research and analysis, education and
exploration, command and control operations, and
Collaborative and interactive solutions.
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Visualization is the common language that allows people
from different backgrounds, training, and expertise to
engage in an immediately productive working session. SGI
Reality Center facilities are powered by scalable
visualization systems designed to drive large-scale,
immersive, and multi-projector environments. SGI scalable
visualization systems offer superior performance and unique
features such as clip-mapping, texture paging, volume
rendering, multi-stream HDTV video manipulation,
multichannel output, and immersion support.
SGI derives a large source of its revenue from government
applications by providing scalable computing, collaborative
visualization, and complex data management solutions.
Government applications cover ballistic missile defense,
homeland security, weather and climate forecasting,
simulation-based acquisition, training systems, research
and development, command and control, and surveillance and
reconnaissance. The largest technical users are
governments worldwide that are focused on applications of
national defense and intelligence, law enforcement and
homeland security, health care and social services,
scientific research and education, transportation and
communication, and energy and the environment.
Other industries include manufacturing and energy in the
automotive, aerospace, electronics, and oil and gas
sectors.
Hollywood and Science: A Love Story
The battle for envisioning the future between sci-fi and
real science is really a “which came first, the chicken or
egg” question. It’s hard to say how many scientists were
influenced by Stanley Kubrick’s, 2001: Space Odyssey, or
how much Kubrick was influenced by advances in computer
technology and space exploration. The Internet was born
before the movie Matrix, but the Matrix has eerily
prophesized where the Internet might be headed so many
decades into the future.
And the chicken or egg question is really a moot one.
Let’s call the relationship between Hollywood and science a
wonderfully symbiotic one, neither of which can do without
the other. Hollywood will continue to push the barrier,
allowing us to see life on planets and imaginary futuristic
worlds that telescopes and scientific forecasting
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techniques can’t give us. Meanwhile, nanotechnology,
genetic engineering and the building of biospheres will
inspire a whole new generation of films.
Hollywood’s Construction of Reality
Hollywood doesn’t just create an image or even a vision.
It creates entire universes with unknown galaxies.
It
builds replicas of planets, spaceships, cities, ships and
every conceivable kind of building. Something most movie
goers don’t realize is the end credits—when most everyone
is walking out of a theater or ejecting a video/DVD—is a
list of names and job titles represent nothing short of a
small if not mid-sized company.
The crews for many films
number in the hundreds.
The image—the view—we get as movie watchers is the result
of 100s of workers building sets, designing costumes,
setting lights, and planning camera angles. Each shot is
often planned with military precision. And what can’t be
done on a set is now done on a computer.
Big budget special effects (F/X) movies like Star Wars, the
Lion King, Terminator, Titanic and Day after Tomorrow, have
become notorious for their whopping multi-million dollar
price tags. Price tags are not what are amazing. What’s
amazing is what goes into creating what some call illusion,
others call fantasy, and still others call a glimpse of
truth.
Constructing an image goes beyond the selection of a lens
and camera, set designer, costumer, production designer,
stunt coordinator and actors. It’s not just a construction
of an image but a re-construction of reality. 150 million
dollar movies are now common knowledge. But what these
movies really are, are 150 million dollar images—visions of
a team of talent, crew and business who’ve come together to
present their collective view. It is their telling of a
story; their “picture” of a much larger picture. In fact,
it’s not a team. It’s a company of 200-300 employees
taking months if not years of planning to put together a
“vision” that gets expressed in a two-hour movie.
Interesting in how some stories are “timeless.” Few
survivors and scattered accounts exist to tell the story of
the Titanic. No one was taking pictures at the time. No
doubt by today’s standards, someone would have captured the
horror on digital video.
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Suspension of Disbelief
In the movie, Titanic, James Cameron came close to
rebuilding the doomed ship. His “replica” was built
according to original blueprint specifications. In
Jurassic Park, paleontologists, along with Steven
Spielberg’s imagination, combined to give us the closest
we’ve ever come to knowing what a dinosaur looks like.
Hollywood uses many tools and techniques to create images,
which ultimately tell a story: 3D Modeling, weather
simulation, set building, blue-screen projection, sound
layering (F/X, music and dialog), animation, stunts,
lights, acting, storyboards, puppets, CGI, and all the
ingredients of a screenplay: the blueprint of a movie.
The trick is to use drama to make the image seem real. But
no matter what tricks Hollywood uses, or how close it comes
to something real, movie makers are entirely dependent on
an audience’s willingness to temporarily suspend disbelief.
People want to believe dogs can talk, angels exist, and
some regular Joe or Jane is going to save the planet from
an alien attack.
It’s hard to say what effects giant sharks, evil fog, and
robot wars have on movie goers, yet alone a global
audience. Most people know when something is “only make
believe”. But then, how many people could not go in the
ocean after seeing Jaws? Do we think twice about global
warming after seeing The Day After Tomorrow? The visions
of Minority Report, AI: Artificial Intelligence, Matrix
and the whole Star War series are certainly plausible ones
in terms of where technology is headed.
A popular image used to illustrate how far
technologically is to show a group of cave
primitive tribe viewing a TV for the first
perspectives of fantasy and reality depend
to use for comparisons.
we’ve come
dwellers or a
time. Our
on what we have
Hollywood has been criticized for taking far too much
liberty with historical fact. The line of defense is
poetic license, or enhancement for dramatic effect. Like
“Buyer Beware” in product purchases, it’s “Viewer Beware”
in media consumption.
It’s a tough call in saying whether films educate or
entertain. A story might not be historically accurate, but
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it can bring attention to historical events that otherwise
would go unnoticed. The movie Braveheart is a good
example, where only the most astute students of history
would know who William Wallace was.
What could be more exciting than a motorcycle chase through
a herd of stampeding dinosaurs? In movies, drama and
action are used to enhance the image—make the image come
alive. Animators are performers, too. The goal of an
animator is not only in showing what a dinosaur looks like,
but also how it moves, what it eats, and what it sounds
like. Ironically, it’s the use of fantasy to create
realism.
The Story
The criticism that Hollywood is all about special effects
is not true. The heart of any movie lies in its story…and
there are many stories. There are heart-warming tales of
reunited fathers and sons, lovers meeting for the first
time, best friends growing up, and animals rescued from
near death.
We get to see the humanity in others who otherwise go
unnoticed in everyday life. Spiderman isn’t so much about
the wish fulfillment of being a superhero as it is about an
average guy struggling with family and identity problems,
meanwhile searching for love. Rocky is not about a boxer
winning a championship, but about an ordinary person
overcoming obstacles to finally find a way to believe in
himself.
Sigourney Weaver demonstrates in Alien how a
woman can boldly and bravely save the planet, even if it
means fighting a very ugly monster from outerspace.
Movie history is a fascinating one with very dramatic
pivotal events. Screenwriters weren’t around when Thomas
Edison first invented the motion picture camera. In the
silent era, a series of vignettes or action sequences was
the best anyone could hope for in terms of a telling a
story without sound. Without sound, there’s no dialog.
Without dialog, there’s no character. Without character,
there’s no story.
However, there have been many interesting experiments done
in telling stories visually without dialog, or minimal use
of dialog. Quest for Fire and 2001: A Space Odyssey are
two examples. Plus, since movies are a visual medium, it’s
the primary quest of a moviemaker to tell a story visually.
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To be more accurate, everything serves to tell a story, not
the other way around. The score, sets, costumes, sound
effects, camera angles, and even the actors, are all story
telling devices that when combined, tell a story.
As film technology developed, namely the addition of sound
and color, writers from all the worlds of literature,
theater and journalism poured into Hollywood. During the
30s, some of the world’s most famous writers wrote
Hollywood scripts, like William Faulkner, Ring Lardner,
Jr., F. Scott Fitzgerald, Berthold Brecht, and Thomas Mann.
This holds true today, although most movies based on wellknown novels use screenwriters other than the original
novelist to write the screenplay. Peter Benchley was the
source behind Jaws. Ian Fleming launched the James Bond
series. John Grisham gave us The Pelican Brief. Gene
Rodenberry was behind Star Trek and J.K. Rowling is behindthe-scenes, generating the phenomenally successful Harry
Potter series.
Very few screenwriters are as well-known as novelists, but
that doesn’t stop them from making millions of dollars, in
some cases. It wasn’t always that way and very few
screenwriters command such high salaries. When
scriptwriters aren’t writing screenplays, they’re writing
sitcoms for TV, an entirely different way of telling a
story.
Writing for TV presents an entirely different way of
telling a story largely due to two reasons: shows are
syndicated over time and are subjected to repeated
commercial advertising interruption. Throughout the
history of radio and TV, it’s hard to say if programming
served advertising, or if advertising rode on the back of
programming. With cable TV and subscription services, that
all changed. Plus, now TV shows can be downloaded from the
Internet, completely free of commercial interruption.
Although writers remain behind the scenes, there is not one
single Academy Award winning actor or actress who would’ve
won without a powerful, moving story behind them. An actor
can spend weeks, months, sometimes even years, searching
for the right script to launch or re-launch a career.
The impact stories in movies have on culture and society is
immeasurable. Box office sales and DVD/video rentals are
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one way to measure in terms of business and commerce. But
the fact that many people know more about their favorite
stars than they do about their next door neighbors, paints
an entirely different picture.
Famous lines like “Make my day” and “Here’s looking’ at
you, kid” become the language of pop culture. Everyone
dreams of being a famous Hollywood actor or actress; it’s
the best life has to offer. But even more difficult to
see, is the impact a story has, without all the glitter and
glamour attached to it. We are frightened. We cry. We
laugh. We are amazed. We are inspired. We identify.
Hollywood, and the stories behind it, has a negative side
as well. From around 1947 to 1960, Senator Joseph McCarthy
and the House Un-American Activities Committee began a
vicious campaign against suspected Communists. Hollywood
was one of his main targets. Many writers, actors and
other film personnel were blacklisted, often forced to use
fake names to continue working.
Today, filmmakers--and writers--work under the scrutiny of
the Parental Advisory Board, an organization dedicated to
ensuring Hollywood stays on a good moral track. The
pornography world thrives in spite of any rating system.
The rating system is essentially one that rates content for
violence and sex. Some movies become targets for attack by
other groups, like Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ by
Christian religious groups and Philadelphia by gay groups.
Many scenes in movies manage to float just under the moral
radar, and parents can’t watch their children all the time.
In fact, some parents seldom adhere to restricting their
child’s viewing of movies based on ratings. Movies like
Halloween and I Know What You Did Last Summer are filled
with violence, and are openly targeted to those 18 and
younger.
Watching the credits at the end of a movie will reveal
there are anywhere from a 100 to 200 people responsible for
the movie coming to life. Both those are only the people
involved in the making of the movie. From there, movie
critics, theater owners and a vast marketing and
distribution system work to make the movie a flop or a
success. Ultimately, a movie’s success rests with the
audience.
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Why people love the movies goes beyond escapism or the need
to simply be entertained. True, movies are not like the
documentaries we see in school, showing the lives of
insects and how trees grow. But movies are definitely
educational, if not in a scholastic sense. They teach us
about ourselves. They increase our awareness about
different cultures, technological change and places we
never knew existed.
The worlds of Hollywood, optics, photography, art and
science collide in a frenzied race to create a vision of
the past, present and future.
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A Mixed View:
Art
Astrology
Dreams
Paranormal
Cartoons
Sex, Money and Violence
Image: How Do I Look?
Art
NOTE: See Pixar in the Hollywood section for a short
description of how the Museum of Modern Art has provided
numerous exhibits celebrating the merger of art, animation
and film.
The history of art is vast, starting with those cave
paintings mentioned in the beginning of this article. And
like those cave paintings, it’s not always apparent what is
being depicted and what message is being sent in any given
artistic expression.
“Is Mickey Mouse Art?” was a rousing battle cry through the
60s and 70s, an issue that has since morphed into the same
question regarding computer graphics. But more
importantly, it’s not a question of what art is, but what
artistic expression says about the universe, and all the
stuff in it.
Art history is far too vast a subject to be sufficiently
covered in a series of articles, yet alone a series of
books. In fact, art is everywhere. Historically, there is
prehistoric art, ancient art (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece,
Persia), middle ages (Jewish, early Christian, Islamic,
Gothic), the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Romanticism,
Realism, Victorian, Modernism, Impressionism, Symbolism,
Art Nouveau, and into the 20th century with Cubism,
Futurism, Abstract, Art Deco, Dadaism, Surrealism, Pop Art,
Kinetic Art, and a host of other movements and styles.
Cultural differences are as vast as the mere mention of
countries, from China to India, the Americas to the Middle
East, and the 200 +/- countries that belong to the United
Nations. Nor are cultures unified by geographical borders.
In New York, for instance, sometimes turning a corner can
be as dramatically different as crossing the borders from
China through Europe into Italy.
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Clearly, art is highly subjective, from both the creator
and viewer perspective, where the goal was never to capture
reality, but to interpret it. Of course, realism became a
movement, where the goal of drawings and paintings was to
capture something so realistic as to be indistinguishable
from photos. But photos are not living, breathing
representations of reality either. The quality of the
film, the camera, the lighting and development processing,
are all factors that generate varying levels of realism.
Yet, some paintings are mesmerizing in their ability to
transport a viewer into what appears to be real. And with
3D computer modeling, some objects become even more real
than in real life. With 3D modeling, we can view an object
in its entirety, including what’s inside. We can highlight
aspects of the object that go unnoticed by the naked eye.
On a world scale, the differences in artistic expression
are, well, so different, it’s almost hard to imagine we’re
all from the same planet. To appreciate art from countries
other than our own requires some understanding of our
cultural differences, and how those differences express
entirely different worldviews from our own.
There is a movement--although it doesn’t really have a
name--designed to eradicate our cultural differences.
Nothing fuels this movement more than the desire to make
English the universal language. But it might not be as
hegemonic as it first appears. The movement could very
well be a practical one. As technology moves us closer to
a unified world, we need to communicate in a language
everyone understands. Language then, is a barrier.
However, the choice of English as the universal language is
very telling in itself. First, who is doing the choosing?
Is there really a consensus amongst nations to head in this
direction? Globalization is not just about the quest for a
universal language, but also the Americanization or
westernization of global cultures.
The practical necessities of everyday life are not
conducive to cultural expression, especially when such
expression gets in the way of business. For instance, when
a country exposes another country to a new technological
development, the ability to do so is severely restricted by
the time it takes to interpret one language into another.
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For that reason alone, multi-lingual employees are favored
to make the exchange more efficient and less time
consuming.
Differences in creativity span not only across geographical
boundaries, but time as well. Our world would seem bland
and colorless without the richness of ancient Egyptian,
Greek, Asian and American Indian art. Plus, creativity is
not confined merely to hobbies and ways to pass the time.
The line between creativity and innovation--with innovation
seemingly having a more practical value--is a thin one.
Like the use of computers in movie making and the use of
graphics in science, the relationship between art and
innovation is a symbiotic one.
The old adage, “Invention is the mother of necessity,” does
not necessarily reveal where artists and inventors get
their inspiration. The desire to fly might not have come
from the need to transport the largest number of travelers
in the shortest amount of time. The inspiration could very
well have come from a painting of birds in flight.
The view that art is something impractical fails to
appreciate something inherent in all human endeavors.
Grecian urns were not just for carrying water. They had
artistic shape with elaborate paintings on the sides.
Fast-forwarding to modern times, airplanes are not pink or
rainbow-colored. Why? Houses and cars certainly come in a
variety of colors, and most architecture is appreciated for
looks even more so than function.
Entire empires and civilizations, past and current, are
recognized for art, perhaps more so than in terms of being
advanced societies or possessing superior scientific
capability. We marvel at the beauty of pyramids, 100 foot
ornate columns and cobble stone streets, with disregard for
any practical value. We place tremendous value on
preserving the “beauty” of the past, much in the same way
we value nature untouched by human intervention.
When a real estate developer surveys an area of land
motivated by a housing shortage, a beautiful lake just gets
in the way. But the practical value of beauty is something
we might not be able to articulate. To an
environmentalist, the lake is beautiful because it is the
home to a variety of wildlife. Its beauty lies in
ecological balance with the forests, fields, mountains and
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deserts that surround it.
Globalization, westernization and modernization might be
one and the same. Many believe kids in America are much
more preoccupied with Playstations and iPods than with the
mysteries of ancient Chinese drawings or the spiritual
meaning behind African pottery. Ironically, drawing and
painting is a prevalent activity throughout American K-12
schools, especially pre-school.
Pop culture is an entity all its own. Las Vegas is a good
example of where culture is meaningless, outside of being a
gimmick to attract tourists. Las Vegas is a cultural soup
of pyramids and Eiffel Towers, pirate ships and Roman
architecture, the streets of New York and the canals of
Venice, all thrown onto the same 20 mile stretch of Las
Vegas Boulevard. Visiting museum exhibits compete for
tickets against world wrestling and rodeo championships.
Techno-dance pounds away in dozens of late night,
erotically charged clubs while retired “snowbirds” from the
Midwest take in a Wayne Newton concert.
Vegas has nothing to do with preserving cultural heritage,
global or American. It’s a lure for gambling. But Vegas
is no different than any other tourist trap, where culture
is the primary calling card and means of making money. Is
this bad? It’s hard to say. But, it’s an ironic twist
when Americans travel to other lands to see different
cultures only to find a McDonald’s, a Kentucky Fried
Chicken and a poster of Arnold Schwarzenegger everywhere
they go.
Pop culture in America can get a little trashy. There is
as much interest in the drug and sex habits of Hollywood
movie stars as there is in the latest roles they played.
Movie stars are technically actors and actresses. They are
dramatic artists. America—especially the media—loves to
rate celebrities on scales of 1-10: Who’s the hottest,
sexiest, and most beautiful? The magazine shelves in
grocery stores abound with covers of beautiful starlets,
nearly all under the age of 30.
So where is the art? Can a painter make a living today?
Or is there a new art—technology art? We express ourselves
through electronic gadgets, many of which, ironically, are
used to share photos. In some filmmaking circles, calling
a movie an “art film” is an insult. There is such a thing
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as trying to be too artistic, apparently.
Advertising commercials are the new art. Auto
manufacturers spend billions on design alone, over and
above safety and function. Gated communities are
landscaped with exotic plants and water fountains. MP3
players are sleek and pastel-colored. Designer clothing
says so much more than jeans and a pair of work boots. And
in Hollywood, space ship explosions, fast car chases and
giant robot wars are the new art, far more exciting than
standing in a museum looking at a boring landscape or some
old Queen from who knows where.
In Tampa, Florida, water pumps are painted blue. Outside
of Las Vegas, bridges over interstate highways are painted
by Native Americans. In Bemidji, Minnesota, huge statues
of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox have stood for decades.
In Los Angeles and New York, entire walls and buildings are
dedicated to graffiti.
Again, art is everywhere.
Astrology
Before the 17th century, the terms astrology and astronomy
were often interchangeable. Astronomy was considered more
mathematical and astrology more philosophical. Sadly,
despite the popularity of astrological predictions found in
magazines and newspaper, astrology as a science has lost
credibility. Events on earth are linked with events in the
sky, with all life regulated by the movements of the sun,
moon, planets and other celestial bodies. Both astronomy
and astrology are based on these celestial occurrences.
Earthly events such as floods, droughts, seasons and the
ocean’s tides, linked with the rotation of celestial
bodies, are relatively easy to understand. The scientific
correlations have been proven time and again. But other
events don’t have such a strong correlation, and could only
be explained by religion and symbolic connections.
The Babylonians are generally credited with the birth of
astrology, a mixture of astronomy, mathematics, religion
and mythology. Astrological charts were used to predict
seasonal change and various celestial events. Babylonian
astrology was introduced to the Greeks early in the 4th
century B.C. and, through the studies of Plato, Aristotle,
and others, astrology came to be highly regarded as a
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science. It was soon embraced by the Romans (the Roman
names for the zodiac signs are still used today) and the
Arabs and later spread throughout the entire world.
Astrology attempts to bring order out of chaos. This is
reflected in the astrological musings found in popular
magazines and newspapers, where advice given is predicated
on the belief a person’s life is an unsolved puzzle. It is
also a device used to predict the future.
In earlier centuries, it was used to predict weather
patterns largely for agricultural purposes. But eventually
it broadened to include forecasts of natural disasters, war
and other events in the course of human affairs. The
accuracy of these predictions or lack thereof, partly
explains why astrology isn’t taken seriously. There’s no
mathematical, scientific basis for predicting human events,
like there is for predicting physical events that occur as
regularly repeated patterns.
But, the inability of science to accurately predict social,
cultural and personal change explains why religion, myth
and astrology are so popular.
The zodiac comes from the Greek word meaning “circle of
animals.” It is believed to have developed in ancient
Egypt, later adopted by the Babylonians. Early astrologers
first learned about the twelve lunar cycles. Twelve
constellations were then identified to correspond with the
lunar cycles.
The signs of the zodiac are subdivided into four groups:
Fire signs: Aries, Sagittarius, Leo
Water signs: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces
Air sings: Libra, Aquarius, Gemini
Earth signs: Capricorn, Taurus, Virgo
Each of these four groups is inscribed in its own quadrant
or “house” on a circle. The division of the twelve houses
is based on the earth’s daily rotation. Astrologers link
these divisions with human activity such as relationships,
travel, finance and career path. However, the division of
the twelve signs of the zodiac is based on the earth’s
yearly rotation around the sun and astrologers relate these
divisions to character, such as Venus and affection or
Mercury with speech and writing. Each planet rules two
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signs and the sun and moon rule one sign each.
A horoscope is a map of the zodiac circle with the earth at
the center. The top of the circle represents the sun at
its highest point during the day and left and right of that
are the eastern and western horizons. A horoscope charts
the relative positions of the sun, moon, planets, and stars
at a specific time and place, such as a birth date.
Astrologers use sidereal time (measured from the equinox),
rather than clock time. Once the date and time are
selected and calculated as sidereal time and the location
known and plotted, the astrologer consults an ephemeris.
An ephemeris is a table listing the angles and locations of
the sun, moon, planets, and constellations at any given
time. From this, a chart is constructed.
Computer software programs are now used to construct
charts, which can be mathematically complex. However, the
real art and science of astrology comes into play in the
attempt to interpret the charts. Some people are
superstitious, while others derive whatever meaning they
can.
Astrology is often defined in dictionaries as “the ancient
art or science of divining the fate and future of human
beings from indications given by the position of stars and
other heavenly bodies.” In ancient times, it was once
believed Gods—represented by celestial bodies—determined
fate. For instance, Mars was the God of war. There is a
temptation for those with Mars as their birth sign to
believe they somehow possess war-like qualities, like that
of a soldier. In turn, Libra is symbolized by the scale,
and it’s easy to believe that by symbol alone Librans
search for balance and justice.
These myths from ancient times have survived through the
centuries, and understandably so. Science has proven there
is no sun God or other Gods embodied in the shape of
celestial bodies. But, it has not disproved the existence
of a God as the creator of life. Astronomers surround
themselves with fancy telescopes, supercomputers, build
academic departments devoted to the science, and spout
forth exotic theories about space, time, light and gravity.
But the Big Bang theory has no more scientific basis than
intelligent design, a phrase currently popular in today’s
evolution vs. God debate.
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It’s not astrology’s job to prove the existence of God.
It’s more mystical than that, as so much of life is as
well. Mysticism not only gives us meaning but also adds
color and even fun in our lives. Without denigrating the
seriousness of astrology, astrology turns the universe into
somewhat of a celestial playground, where the human spirit
is free to see whatever it wants to see...until science
proves otherwise.
Dreams
Perhaps no area of scientific inquiry is least understood
than the mysteries of dreams. We can catalog black holes
and electron orbits, turn light into energy and produce a
slew of devices based on a host of scientific principles,
but dreams are just something you wake up after and forget.
Dream interpretations were documented in clay tablets as
far back as 3000-4000 B.C. But that says little when we’ve
been dreaming since the first day humans walked the earth.
A number of primal, ancient and even current primitive
societies don’t distinguish between the dream world and
reality. In other words, dreams are real. What happens in
dreams really happens. If reality is used as a measuring
stick for the interpretation of dreams, then dreams cannot
possibly be real. Dreams are then just the result of
overactive imaginations.
Back in the Greek and Roman era, dream interpreters
accompanied military leaders into battle. So did
astrologists. What affect this had on the fall and rise of
such empires is a question for historians. Dreams were
often seen as messages from the Gods. They were seen in a
religious context and in Egypt, priests also acted as dream
interpreters. The Egyptians recorded their dreams in
hieroglyphics. People with particular vivid and
significant dreams were believed to be blessed and were
considered special. Just who was deciding what dreams were
blessed and special has its parallel in today’s movie
critics.
People who had the power to interpret dreams were looked up
to and seen as divinely gifted. In the bible, there are
hundreds of mentions concerning dreams. But priests and
pastors today are not good sources to go to for
interpretation of dreams, unless there is a desire to place
all of what we dream in the context of divine intervention.
Dreams are frequently sexual, and morality could very well
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get in the way of what such dreams really mean.
Dreams were also seen as prophetic, and still are. People
often looked to their dreams for signs of warning or
advice. It was an oracle or omen from outside spirits,
whether it was a message from a deity, from the dead, or
even the devil himself. Dreams were used as tools by
healers in understanding what was wrong with a dreamer.
We are no longer influenced by many Gods. Most religions
today have reduced many to just one. God is speaking to us
through our dreams, but very few people have a grip on just
exactly what messages are being sent.
Dreams might be actual places our spirits visit every
night. Sometimes we look forward to these “movies” in our
head. Other times, dreams are nightmares. Psychologists
say dreams are a form of release. We can express our
desires in dreams in ways we could never do in reality.
Sigmund Freud, in his Interpretation of Dreams, was
extremely influential in acknowledging the importance of
dreams. But the world of dreams is far too vast and
mythological to be reduced to a clinical analysis, where
dreams are an expression or release of anxiety, neurosis,
or even psychosis.
Dreams could be visions of the past, visions of the future,
or the dead invading our psyches to tell us things. Dreams
are far too disjointed to make sense out of them in the way
we construct a movie, say, out of a screenplay that follows
a logical plot line. Dreams are linear, up to a point.
We follow along a progression of events, and then suddenly,
a totally unrelated image appears. We can’t make sense out
of it all. Cartoons get mixed with faces of people we
either might’ve known, or have never known. We visit
exotic landscapes, fight battles with faceless creatures,
read books upside down written in unexplainable languages,
fly, fall and scream, all without any apparent reason.
Dreams certainly don’t follow any kind of natural
progression from one night to the next. It’s sort of like
going to the movies and whatever happens to be playing,
that’s what we see. However, some dreams are recurring,
even haunting. When dreams get in the way of normal
functioning, that’s when they get attention.
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The movies have explored the realm of dreams, either
directly or indirectly. Frequently, the story centers
somewhere around fear of the dark and the inability to
sleep because of what might be under the bed. Examples
include Nightmare on Elm Street, Deadzone, and Flatline,
and Field of Dreams.
However, Deadzone was more about clairvoyance—a man who has
visions of the future whenever he touches another person’s
hand. Flatline toyed more with the afterlife, or nearafterlife, but since the characters did not actually die,
the visions they had were more the result of a deep sleep.
Field of Dreams has dreams in the title, but the story is
more about wish fulfillment than an exploration of dreams.
Dreams are often thought of as expressions of wish
fulfillment.
What is most puzzling is our inability to remember our
dreams. Everyone has experienced at one time or another
difficulty in describing a dream to someone else. But it
might not be as painful as listening to someone else try in
vain to tell us their dreams. The descriptions are usually
accompanied with distorted faces, puzzled by fractured
images, mystified by surreal. Inevitably, we then walk
away with no more mention, simply because we have no
comprehension whatsoever of what the dream meant or the
significance of dreams in our lives.
It is sad that our culture or cultures blow off dreams as
if they were the creations of a mad artist.
The Paranormal: Things We See No One Else Sees
It's amazing what we see and how we see, but it's even more
amazing what we see that isn't there. Of course, numerous
accounts of the weird, strange, unexplained and the
paranormal tell a different story. Maybe not everyone saw
something, but someone did, at least, that's what they
claimed. In many cases there are photos to prove it.
Unfortunately, because of so many photographic process
tricks, pictures become equally suspect
Media has a long history of fascination with the occult,
bizarre, strange, weird and paranormal side of life, from
radio’s Only the Shadow Knows to Rod Serling’s hugely
popular Twilight Zone, to movies like Ghost, Poltergeist,
Hide and Seek, Signs and others.
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It’s important to understand that many movies that seem to
be about the paranormal are really about something else.
The movie, Ghost, features, well, a ghost, but it’s really
a love story. Poltergeist addresses head on what happens
when people mess around with graveyards, but it’s really a
story about greed. Although the little girl is trapped
inside a TV, there is the slight hint at virtual reality
and the desire to enter into a TV show instead of passively
watching it. The movie, Pleasantville, does this directly,
where characters are sucked into a black and white 50s
scenario and a world where color is taboo.
Mindreading is frequently dealt with humorously in the
movies, such as Mel Gibson in What Women Want and Bruce
Willis is the talking baby movie, Look Who's Talking.
Animation techniques are sophisticated enough to make
creatures of all types appear as though they can talk, act
and feel just like us normal folk. If all else fails,
voice-over narration picks up where animation leaves off.
In Ghost, we can hear the voice of a dead person because of
two reasons: one is the suspension of disbelief and the
other is by allowing the audience to hear something other
characters in the movie don’t hear. It takes Whopi
Goldberg’s character, with a peculiar gift and special
receptivity for hearing voices from the dead, to convey
messages from the dead person (----) to the living (Demi
Moore).
In The Shining, Jack Nicholson’s character hears voices
from the dead, and because of it, it ultimately drives him
insane.
Sean Patrick Flanery's character in the movie, Powder, has
the ability to bend forks and make a hunter feel the pain
and suffering of a dying deer just after it was brutally
shot. Near the end of the movie, it’s revealed his powers
come from a divine or cosmic source. The goal of the story
is to connect us with something larger than ourselves and
that when we hurt something or someone, it affects the
universe. It’s a bit of a twist on chaos theory.
Religion and the Paranormal
No area generates more controversy in the unseeable than
religion. From burning witches at the stake to modern day
chants, "I've seen the glory of God," believers make
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astounding claims of seeing things that can't be seen.
Statues and drawings of Jesus are known to bleed. Rising
from the grave is not a Jesus exclusive. Night of the
Living Dead is but one of tons of movies where the dead
rise from murky shallow graves to haunt the living.
The quest for the Shroud of Turin, Noah's Ark and the Holy
Grail is a lifelong ambition for some.
In Hollywood, no film struck terror in religious hearts
more than The Exorcist (1973). Linda Blair's head turning
a full 360 degrees and vomiting streams of green gob was
enough to frighten anyone.
Besides great special F/X that scared the hell out of
everyone--pun intended--what was the religious message of
The Exorcist? The devil embodies evil and anything evil is
the devil. This leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
The sheer belief that God speaks to us is bound to conjure
up a slew of voices...and images. However, no actor in
his/her right mind would ever play the role of God. After
all, what does God sound like? Well, that's not true.
Only one of the funniest comedians of all time, George
Burns, would dare embody the spirit of the Lord and smoke a
cigar at the same time.
The fact that many see Jesus as white and handsome has
generated enough controversy as it is. In The Exorcist,
the devil allegedly spoke in many tongues, but what
audiences heard was primarily a deep, ominous male voice.
Once again, both God and Devil are men.
this charade?
Where are women in
The devil wears many a disguise, but most people peg him as
a male--red, with horns, carrying a three-pronged fork.
Interestingly, the issue of whether God or the Devil is a
woman is one repeatedly ignored. Occasionally there is a
reference to women, such as the band INXS and their song,
"Every Single Woman Has The Devil Inside," or maybe the
movie classics, The Devil In Ms. Jones, which took form as
both a 1940s thriller and a 1970s classic porno film.
There's an angel on every shoulder. Usually it's a classic
angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. How many
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people actually see these angels is a scary thought. But
thanks to Hollywood and animation, we can put an angel on a
shoulder and actually have some very fun conversations.
Angels have wings and many people believe in their
existence as much as they believe God is a man or Jesus had
a beard. Angels aren't the only creatures that can fly.
Fairies, Pegasus, various Gods and of course most ghosts
can not only fly but move through walls. There are even a
few flying pigs and elephants floating around out there in
someone's imagination.
The key point here is not so much what we see that others
don't see, but that we can see anything we want in our
mind's eye. We don't just believe something; there's
almost always a visual to go with it...plus sound F/X.
The bible--and its many versions--is filled with astounding
tales as common as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Water
turns to wine. A man lives in a whale. A sea is parted.
Angels fall from grace. A snake talks to Adam, and a woman
is born from his rib.
Artists have plenty of work as long as people keep
imagining such tales. The Bible was never illustrated.
Yet, every priest and pastor has a picture of Jesus on the
wall in their office.
And what is not visualized by something resembling real
life, it is represented by a symbol.
Symbolism is especially important in terms of what we see.
There can be no greater examples than the cross and the
flag.
Every major--and in most cases, minor--corporation has an
identifiable logo as easily recognizable as the faces of
our own mothers. Some people might confuse McDonald's
Golden Arches with the Gates of Heaven.
But religion goes way back to a time when there were many
Gods, not just one. The Greeks had their Gods. The
Egyptians had theirs. And the Chinese, East Indians and
Aztecs each had their own cast of Gods.
There was a God for everything and they did some very crazy
things: the God of Thunder, the God of Wine, the God of
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War, the Goddess of Love and the Goddess of Fertility.
Finally, women had roles to play. They were one big family
with a considerable amount of dysfunction.
Did people actually see these Gods, beyond mere
representations in cloud formations? And what was the
embarrassing moment when people finally realized that,
well, we really can't see Gods? But then, ironically, as
much as we make fun of multiple Gods, it sure doesn't stop
us from seeing a single God.
If you don't know what something looks like--like a God-then how would you know how to react? For instance, "The
Gods will get you," must've conjured up the worst images
and fears for a hapless peasant in ancient Rome. And the
shift from many Gods to one God must've been--and still is-a most difficult transition since the believer must prove
there is only one God...without any photos as evidence.
The paradox becomes even more complex when a Muslim God
takes on an entirely different appearance than a Christian
one.
Perhaps no pair of images captures the imagination more
than that of Heaven and Hell. How we see what isn't there
is even amazingly still captured in color. The devil is
red, not green or yellow. Hell is also red, being full of
fire. Heaven is white, floating on a soft pillow of air.
Both places have the eternity tag attached to them, a very
persuasive means of instilling fear one way or the other.
If whatever happens after death is going to happen forever,
well, that just makes the images much more vivid...and
scary.
Heaven is above and hell is below. Hell is someplace in
the center of our planet and Heaven is somewhere up in the
stars. Most assuredly, we've proven that there is no place
in the core of our planet where people dwell. It's really
just a swirl of molten rock. Perhaps that's hell enough.
In fact, even the most vehement believers confess to
knowing Heaven and Hell are not real places, but more a
state of mind. But just what is a state of mind? What do
people see when they see heaven and hell?
This might be a key to understanding the power of religion.
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Actual pictures are not needed in the game of persuasion.
Religious leaders count on the fact that most believers and
believers-to-be have over-active imaginations. Say the
word "hell" and watch them shudder. Say the word "heaven"
and watch them put their hands together in prayer.
Heaven or hell is the best we have to offer so far when it
comes to seeing the afterlife. Ask anyone what they "see"
when they try to imagine life after death, and most likely
the images will be some variation of heaven or hell.
What else IS there? Do we just float around in the stars,
become part of the electromagnetic wave, or turn into
living photons?
Ghosts
How much ghosts are the result of religious beliefs is a
subject for historical research. The point is, people see
ghosts all the time, religious or not.
Ghosts are a way to bring the dead back to life. Somehow,
it just doesn't make sense that someone we saw yesterday we
can't see tomorrow because they've, well, they've
disappeared.
Where do dead people go? This complex question has spawned
enough Hollywood movies to fill libraries. The Horror
genre has given us such classics as Alfred Hitchcock's, The
Birds, the film version of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, and
superstars Bella Lugosi as Dracula and Lon Chaney as the
Werewolf. The cheesy Night of the Living Dead is a cult
classic. The movie, Halloween, which was originally
released in 1978, has at least 7 sequels to its credit.
Symbolism plays an important role in visions of werewolves
and vampires. They come out at night. The night is scary.
The day is safe. Full moons are particularly mysterious,
especially with eerie clouds floating through the light and
the wind is howling. Dracula wears a black silk cape with
red interior. That's quite a fashion statement. The
werewolf is, well, a man that looks like a wolf. Are there
female werewolves, or is this just a guy thing? Female
vampires, strangely enough, are well known for their
sexuality.
Ghosts don't generally hang around new places, even if
people died in them. Ghosts dwell in old places, like
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Victorian houses and Egyptian tombs. No one in a
day office is going to suddenly announce to their
they've just seen a ghost under their desk. Such
is indicative of how most people don't believe in
fantasies; that ghosts are just "figments of your
imagination."
modern
boss
a truism
such
Even inanimate objects are known to possess--with a strong
emphasis on the word possess--human characteristics.
Houses moan while two windows look like eyes and the door
is the mouth. Trees have arms and fog searches the land
for victims. Now that artificial intelligence is becoming
mainstream, there's no reason to believe a computer crash
is not the result of an attitude problem. It even gets
silly, like happy flying Volkswagens (Disney’s, The Love
Bug).
Halloween
In America and a few other countries, there is no more fun
time than Halloween, especially if there's a haunted house
to visit.
Ghosts love Halloween, since it’s the one time of year they
have the opportunity to scare non-believers. But then,
Halloween is more about giving out free candy and going to
fun parties than it is a shared exploration of things we
don't see.
Halloween dates back 2000 years. The Celts believed that
on the night before the New Year, the boundary between the
worlds of the living and the dead became blurred.
Halloween is a major exercise in seeing the unseeable.
Virtually every imaginary character is represented on the
night of October 31st. The list is far-ranging: Comic
book heroes and heroines, past Presidents, Greek Gods,
werewolves and other monsters, Hollywood and music
superstars, Disney cartoon characters. There's always a
contest to see who can come up with the most creative
costume.
Mediums make their living off of conjured spirits. Most
people who ever participate in a séance are going to see
and hear something, the reason being, they want to. The
guy who didn't see or hear anything and snubs his nose in
disbelief will most certainly never get invited back to the
next one.
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Fortune Tellers
Crystal balls, tarot cards and tea leaves each have their
share of believers and practitioners. Palm readers are
also popular.
But just exactly what does a palm reader see in the hand we
don't? Does the palm reader have some kind of specialized
visual translation software installed in their minds?
If crystal balls really worked, wouldn't everyone have one?
Or does it require specialized training to look into a
glass ball and see the future or past? Maybe it's a
talent. The trick is, is that we must believe what the
"gypsy" sees, since we can't see it ourselves.
Most people suspect that fortune tellers see what they
think we want them to see. They are excellent judges of
character, and of course, a positive vision always uplifts
the spirit.
Fortune telling has little scientific validity, if any.
But perhaps more importantly, is that maybe some people
don't want to see the future, for fear that what they might
see will not necessarily be that positive.
Children's Fairytales
Go into any decent size book store into the Children's book
section, and a world full of fantasy opens up far beyond
the classics. We all know Goldilocks and the Three Bears,
Hansel and Gretel, and Little Red Riding Hood don't exist,
but children don't. What's most popular with kids, from
books to Disney movies and cartoons, is talking animals.
Politics
In America, the two party systems of Democrats and
Republicans, liberals and conservatives, are as split down
the middle as black and white, no pun intended. Civil
debate is supposed to be the cornerstone of democracy, but
anyone with even the slightest clue about politics knows
politics is about power. The two parties are two indelibly
distinct "views" of the world--frequently at blaringly
opposite ends of the spectrum.
What the images or icons of the donkey and the elephant
have come to mean is so strong, that voting on issues is
frequently split down party lines, regardless of the issue.
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It's two parties like two football teams, and the goal is
to win the game. Sacrificing individual beliefs for party
beliefs is subject to severe party pressure.
The Unexplained
The world is jam-packed full of thrilling and controversial
yet unexplained events and locations. Stonehenge and the
Isle of Wight have as many theories about why they exist
and the magic they conjure as there are tourists that visit
these sites annually.
Strange geometric patterns are cut out of corn fields,
frequently explained as the work of aliens. Mother Nature
is full of freakish rock carvings and it's anyone's guess
if humans or aliens played a role, or if it's just the
playground for the sun and wind.
Mirrors and ponds and lakes reflect back faces other than
the person looking into them.
Who can't see a face or object in the clouds as they roll
by?
Superstars
Today's Gods and Goddesses exist in the form of Hollywood,
pop music and other celebrities and stars. Many of these
stars have reached such mythical proportions they no longer
seem human. In Las Vegas, there's an Elvis on every
corner. Marilyn Monroe still reigns as the sexiest woman
ever.
Who these people are is nothing compared to what people see
them as. Even paparazzi, gossip columnists and "inside
entertainment" shows fail to humanize them, such as when
they punch a photographer or are captured without any
makeup on.
Michael Jackson has become a true mythical character that
not even years of court cases and plastic surgery can
erase. But Michael is by no means alone. Willie Nelson is
America's number one modern day rebel. Dolly Parton's
breasts seem to grow with each passing year, unfortunately
masking her phenomenal talent as a songwriter, singer and
performer. Babe Ruth baseball cards are worth 1000s, maybe
even millions.
Clearly, the inability or desire to not want to accept the
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finality of death explains to a large degree the existence
of the paranormal. Some people we don't want to ever die.
Others we want dead, but their evil ways continue to haunt
us long after they've been buried.
Cartoons
Cartoons give us talking animals, a fantasy that dates back
to fantasy novels like Alice in Wonderland. Whether it’s a
cartoon character talking or voice-over narration, it’s a
dramatic device for exploring the inner thoughts of others,
and the thoughts and feelings of animals.
Walt Disney, and the company he built, has become an
American institution. The cultural and social impact of
Disney, Warner and other independently produced cartoon
series and movies defies measurement.
We grow up with animals as our friends, meanwhile consuming
them as a primary food source. Some animals we eat, some
we don’t. But even the ones we eat have found a mythical
life like Elsie the Cow or Red the Rooster. Wiley E. Fox
is an endangered species, and Pepe LePew the skunk, is
considered by many to be a pesky, smelly rodent.
All told, this creates a moral dilemma between protecting
the environment and the human need for survival.
It’s
more confusing where children are concerned, since young
children think all animals are their friends. Children’s
stories and our education system share the burden of
responsibility of children’s perceptions of the world,
along with the creators of cartoons.
Animation has become quite sophisticated, so much so, that
in many movies, it’s hard to tell where animation begins
and reality ends. Films like the Matrix, Lord of the Rings
and Harry Potter (and all the sequels) are just shy of
being full-fledged cartoons—realistic cartoons, if you
will. These movies fall more into the fantasy and sci-fi
categories than the animated film category, but the line is
thin.
Ironically, as we get older, we seem to forget about
cartoons. It seems unimaginable for a person in their 30s,
40s and on up, to be caught sitting around watching
cartoons. What’s even more ironic is that much of the
dialog and even action in cartoons is incomprehensible to
the age group that does watch them.
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Animated films like Shrek, It’s a Bug’s Life and Toy Story,
continue to hold audiences imaginations well into
adulthood. Animation is used prolifically in the sciences.
But watching a nanorobot steering a course through the
bloodstream or an animated documentary on DNA chains can
hardly be called cartoons.
Sex, Money and Violence
Of the three areas most controversial in society and
culture—sex, money, and violence—sex is the most
controversial.
The alleged accidental exposure of Janet
Jackson’s breast during the Super Bowl in 2004 created more
of a stir than all the violent video games, TV shows and
movies put together that year. The sex taboo has spawned a
multi-billion dollar pornography industry, an industry that
showed Wall Street how to make money on the Internet.
Movies are rated. Channel blocking devices are
in TVs. Parental control software is installed
computers. Obviously, the most apparent reason
protect children. But the fear goes far beyond
molesters. It’s a fear of sex itself.
installed
on
is to
the fear of
Violence is rampant in the media. Some of the most wellknown actors are known for their ability to kill the most
people in the shortest amount of time, using every
conceivable weapon known to humankind.
Arnold
Schwarzenegger’s success in politics is largely because
he’s the Terminator, and terminators get the job done.
We
admire public figures, especially politicians, who have the
“killer instinct,” not the “sexual instinct.” And it
certainly helps to have a military background, which is why
former President Bill Clinton was perceived by
conservatives as weak.
Kids spend hours if not days killing aliens, robots and
monsters of various types while playing video games.
Murder mysteries and thrillers dominate the media
landscape, ranging from film versions of Agatha Christie
novels to movies like Silence of the Lambs and TV shows
like CSI. TV news and newspaper headlines are rife with
violence, whether in the form of war or crime.
The lust for money is equally popular, from robbing casinos
in Ocean’s 11 to the celebration of greed in Wall Street.
Suitcases full of money, huge inheritances, winning the
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lotto, high tech jewelry heists, all serve as inspiration
for a slew of movies. Characters like Jesse James
(numerous movies), who would be serving life by today’s
criminal standards, and Al Pacino in Scarface, a ruthless
drug dealer, become celebrated folk heroes, despite their
crimes.
As for sex, shows like Queer Folks for a Straight Guy and L
Word use the freedom of cable TV to cut through the
barriers of regular broadcasting. However, regular TV is
full of hypocrisy, from bouncing female lifeguards in
Baywatch to bouncing girls on trampolines featured
regularly on The Man Show.
TV history is riddled with
gorgeous women flaunting their assets, from I Dream of
Genie and Gilligan’s Island to Friends, Dallas and the
Nanny.
The movie Kinsey was an intelligently written biopic not
only focusing on one of the 21st centuries greatest
scientists, but also the obstacles he faced in a society
saturated with denial, hypocrisy and guilt because of sex.
Still, whatever liberties the movie took in discussing sex
openly, there was still no nudity.
We can go to the beach and see bikini-clad women and men
strutting their stuff. We can view lingerie ads in fashion
magazines as long as they are “tastefully” photographed,
and frequently in black and white. We can watch dozens of
love scenes in movies, many of which are some of the most
treasured scenes in all movie history. We can even play
around with lesbian themes on TV like in Zena: Princess
Warrior. However we cut the moral cake, what we can’t see
is nudity.
Image: How Do I Look?
Looks are everything—so they say. Some companies and
occupations--even entire industry sectors--are devoted
entirely to making something or someone look good. In all
areas of corporate endeavor, marketing, advertising and
promotion departments have the biggest budgets. With the
media on the front line, the goal is to persuade consumers
buy things and services they may or may not need. And the
competition is fierce.
The reference to consumer as opposed to people is a
deliberate one. It demonstrates how we see each other, and
reducing flesh and blood, feelings and thoughts, into
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mindless automatons with expendable cash flow is not
helping us to see who we really are.
Looks and style is often more important than substance.
Ironically, the reasoning is often practical. In a media
saturated culture, competition centers on attention spans,
and image makers have less than a second to capture a
consumer’s or audience’s imagination.
It’s not a question of having choices; it’s a question of
too many choices. Too many choices can apply equally to
stars, politicians and religious leaders as it does to
cars, MP3 players, and stock investments.
The fashion industry is on call 24/7, ready to embark on an
image making mission no less efficient than a military
strike. The mission could be a star’s gown at an awards
ceremony, the President’s tie during a State of the Union
address, or a 13-girl trying to fit in a new school. Hair
styles range from pig-tails to crew cuts. Makeup can be a
touch of rouge lipstick to a strategically placed tattoo.
Jewelry can be a pierced ear to a diamond-studded necklace.
Clothing knows no bounds, from jeans to designer gowns,
from tennis shoes to lingerie.
Every fashion detail is meticulously attended to. Red
might be too bold. A curl on the forehead might be too
sexy. A nose ring automatically defines rebellion. With
products, bright pastels suggest teens, curvy shapes are
erotic, and devices with lots of knobs, buttons and fancy
LCDs represent sophistication and high-tech.
Image is not necessarily always visible. Politicians use
smear campaigns to make a rival “look” bad.
Paparazzi
seek out the immoral, especially if they happen to be “the
beautiful people.” Supreme Court justices are put through
grueling Senate inquiries to ensure there are no skeletons
in the closet.
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Electromagnetic Radiation:
Light
Electromagnetic radiation (waves) is simply another term
for light. Light waves are fluctuations of electric and
magnetic fields in space. Radiation is energy emitted in
the form of waves (light) or particles (photons).
It’s not easy defining electromagnetic radiation,
especially in simple terms. It’s even become more
difficult to say electromagnetic radiation consists of
waves or particles, since many authoritative sources argue
for one or the other, or both. In fact, the argument goes
back to ancient times and continues to this day.
Historically, scientists who subscribed to the wave theory
centered their arguments on the discoveries of Dutchman
Christiaan Huygens. Wave proponents envisions light as
wave-like in nature, producing energy that traverses
through space in a manner similar to the ripples spreading
across the surface of a still pond after being disturbed by
a dropped rock.
Those who subscribe to particle theory cite Sir Isaac
Newton’s prism experiments as proof that light travels as a
shower of particles, each proceeding in a straight line
until it is refracted, absorbed, reflected, diffracted or
disturbed. Particle proponents hold that light is composed
of a steady stream of particles, like droplets of water
sprayed from a garden hose nozzle.
Alfred Einstein, Max Planck, Neils Bohr and others
attempted to explain how electromagnetic radiation can
display what is now called “wave-particle duality.” For
instance, low frequency electromagnetic radiation tends to
act more like a wave than a particle; high frequency
electromagnetic radiation tends to act more like a particle
than a wave.
Visible light is electromagnetic radiation at wavelengths
which the human eye can see. We perceive this radiation as
colors. Light broken up into its component colors is
called the light spectrum. The rainbow (or a light passing
through a prism) reflects this spectrum, consisting of red,
orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The
different colors of light correspond to the different
energies of the light waves.
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Visible light is based on a simple model of propagating
rays and wave fronts, a concept first proposed in the late
1600s by Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens. The way
visible light is emitted or absorbed by substances, and how
it predictably reacts under varying conditions as it
travels through space and the atmosphere, forms the basis
of color. Isaac Newton discovered white light is made up
of all the colors of the visible spectrum.
The electromagnetic (EM) spectrum is a name that scientists
give to varying types of radiation as a group. Radiation
is energy that travels and spreads out as it goes, such as
visible light that comes from a lamp or radio waves that
come from a radio station. The electromagnetic spectrum is
the full range of electromagnetic radiation, consisting of
gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet rays, visible light
(optical), infrared, microwaves, and radio waves.
Many sources emit electromagnetic radiation, and are
generally categorized according to the specific spectrum of
wavelengths generated by the source. Long radio waves are
produced by electrical current flowing through huge
broadcast antennas, while shorter visible light waves are
produced by the energy state fluctuations of negatively
charged electrons within atoms. The shortest form of
electromagnetic radiation, gamma waves, results from decay
of nuclear components at the center of the atom.
Hotter, more energetic objects and events create higher
energy radiation than cool objects. Only extremely hot
objects or particles moving at very high velocities can
create high-energy radiation like X-rays and gamma-rays.
Electromagnetic radiation can be described in terms of a
stream of photons, which are massless particles traveling
in a wave-like pattern and moving at the speed of light. A
photon is the smallest (quantum) unit of
light/electromagnetic energy. Photons are generally
regarded as particles with zero mass and no electric
charge.
After more than 300 years of measuring the speed of light,
the Seventeenth General Congress on Weights and Measures
defined the speed of light at 299,792.458 kilometers per
second. Consequently, the meter is defined as the distance
light travels through a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 seconds.
The speed of light is frequently rounded to 300,000
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kilometers (or 186,000 miles) per second.
Light traveling in a uniform substance, or medium,
propagates in a straight line at a relatively constant
speed, unless it is refracted, reflected, diffracted, or
disturbed in some manner. This was understood and described
as far back as 350 BC by the ancient Greek scholar, Euclid,
in his landmark treatise Optica.
Light waves come in many frequencies. The frequency is the
number of waves that pass a point in space during any time
interval, usually one second. It is measured in units of
cycles (waves) per second, or Hertz (Hz). The frequency of
visible light is referred to as color, and ranges from 430
trillion Hz, seen as red, to 750 trillion Hz, seen as
violet. The full range of frequencies extends beyond the
visible spectrum, from less than one billion Hz, as in
radio waves, to greater than 3 billion billion Hz, as in
gamma rays.
Light not only vibrates at different frequencies, it also
travels at different speeds. Light waves move through a
vacuum at their maximum speed, 300,000 kilometers per
second or 186,000 miles per second, which makes light the
fastest phenomenon in the universe. Light waves slow down
when they travel inside substances, such as air, water,
glass or a diamond. The way different substances affect the
speed at which light travels is key to understanding the
bending of light, or refraction.
The amount of energy in a light wave is proportionally
related to its frequency: High frequency light has high
energy; low frequency light has low energy. Gamma rays
have the most energy, and radio waves have the least. Of
visible light, violet has the most energy and red the
least.
By the late 1960s, lasers were becoming stable research
tools with highly defined frequencies and wavelengths. It
quickly became obvious that a simultaneous measurement of
frequency and wavelength would yield a very accurate value
for the speed of light, similar to an experimental approach
carried out by Keith Davy Froome using microwaves in 1958.
Several research groups in the United States and in other
countries measured the frequency of the 633-nanometer line
from an iodine-stabilized helium-neon laser and obtained
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highly accurate results. In 1972, the National Institute of
Standards and Technology employed the laser technology to
measure the speed at 299,792,458 meters per second (186,282
miles per second), which ultimately resulted in the
redefinition of the meter through a highly accurate
estimate for the speed of light.
This was confirmed later in 1983 by the Seventeenth General
Congress on Weights and Measures. Thus, the meter is
defined as the distance light travels through a vacuum
during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 seconds. In
general, however, (even in many scientific calculations)
the speed of light is rounded to 300,000 kilometers (or
186,000 miles) per second.
Arriving at a standard value for the speed of light was
important for establishing an international system of units
that would enable scientists from around the world to
compare their data and calculations.
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity implies that nothing can go
faster than the speed of light.
All light—natural and artificial—is made up of a collection
of one or more photons propagating through space as
electromagnetic waves. For example, a light source in a
room produces photons and objects in the room reflect those
photons. The eyes absorb the photons and that is how we
see.
The mechanism involved in producing photons is the
energizing of electrons orbiting each atom’s nucleus.
Electrons circle the nucleus in fixed orbits, the way
satellites orbit the Earth. An electron has a natural
orbit that it occupies. When an atom is energized, its
electrons move to higher orbits.
A photon of light is produced whenever an electron in a
high orbit falls back to its normal orbit. During the fall
from high energy to normal energy, the electron emits a
photon (a packet of energy) with very specific
characteristics. The photon has a frequency, or color, that
exactly matches the distance the electron falls.
As an example, sodium vapor lights, the kind seen in
parking lots, are yellow. A sodium vapor light energizes
sodium atoms to generate photons. The energy packets
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generated by the falling sodium electrons fall at a
wavelength that corresponds to yellow light.
The most common way to energize atoms is with heat, the
basis of incandescence. A normal 75-watt incandescent bulb
(or any wattage) is generating light by using electricity
to create heat.
Halogen lamps use electricity to generate heat, but contain
a filament that runs hotter than incandescent bulbs. Gas
lanterns use natural gas or kerosene as the source of heat.
Fluorescent lights use electricity to directly energize
atoms rather than requiring heat. In Indiglo watches,
voltage energizes phosphor atoms. Fireflies use a chemical
reaction to energize atoms.
Each photon contains a certain amount (or bundle) of
energy, and all electromagnetic radiation consists of these
photons. The only difference between the various types of
electromagnetic radiation is the amount of energy found in
the photons. Radio waves have photons with low energies,
microwaves have a little more energy than radio waves,
infrared has still more, then visible, ultraviolet, X-rays,
and the most energetic of all are gamma-rays.
Whether it’s a signal transmitted to a radio from a
broadcast station, heat radiating from a fireplace, X-rays
producing images of teeth, or the visible and ultraviolet
light emanating from the sun, the various categories of
electromagnetic radiation all share identical and
fundamental wave-like properties.
What light is and the properties it contains will continue
to be one of the most fascinating subjects of scientific
inquiry in the future.
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Vision
Why humans have two eyes and not one or three is not
understood despite hundreds of years of scientific inquiry.
But then again, there’s much science doesn’t understand.
We do know that vision involves the nearly simultaneous
interaction of the two eyes and the brain through a network
of neurons, receptors, and other specialized cells.
The first steps in this sensory process are the stimulation
of light receptors in the eyes, conversion of the light
stimuli or images into signals, and transmission of
electrical signals containing the vision information from
each eye to the brain through the optic nerves.
The human eye is equipped with a variety of optical
components including the cornea, iris, pupil, aqueous and
vitreous humors, a variable-focus lens, and the retina.
Together, these elements work to form images of the objects
that fall into the field of view for each eye.
When an object is
convex cornea and
on the surface of
contains millions
observed, it is first focused through the
lens elements, forming an inverted image
the retina, a multi-layered membrane that
of light-sensitive cells.
In order to reach the retina, light rays focused by the
cornea must successively traverse the aqueous humor (in the
anterior chamber), the crystalline lens, the gelatinous
vitreous body, and the vascular and neuronal layers of the
retina before they reach the photosensitive outer segments
of the cone and rod cells. These photo sensory cells detect
the image and translate it into a series of electrical
signals for transmission to the brain.
Color blindness, a disruption in the normal functioning of
human photopic vision, can be caused by host of conditions,
including those derived from genetics, biochemistry,
physical damage, and diseases. Partial color blindness, a
condition where the individual has difficulty
discriminating between specific colors, is far more common
than total color blindness where only shades of gray are
recognized.
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Color
The human eye is sensitive to the narrow band of
electromagnetic radiation called the visible light
spectrum, the source of color. The visible light of the
sun appears to be colorless, or white. White light is not
the light of a single color, or frequency. It is made up
of many color frequencies.
Isaac Newton demonstrated how white light works. Newton
passed sunlight through a glass prism to separate the
colors into a rainbow spectrum. He then passed sunlight
through a second glass prism and combined the two rainbows.
The combination produced white light.
Red, green, and blue are the primary colors. An equal mix
of all three creates white light, while a mix of varying
degrees creates virtually any color. When mixed in equal
proportions, red and blue produce magenta, red and green
produce yellow, and green and blue produce cyan.
Cyan, yellow and magenta are called the complementary
colors. They are also called the primary subtractive
colors because each can be formed by subtracting one of the
primary additives (red, green, and blue) from white light.
For example, yellow light is produced when blue light is
removed from white light, magenta is produced when green is
removed, and cyan is produced when red is removed. The
color observed by subtracting a primary color from white
light results because the brain adds together the colors
that are left to produce the respective complementary or
subtractive color.
White light can be made by other combinations other than
mixing all colors together, such as yellow with blue,
magenta with green, cyan with red, and by mixing all of the
colors together. Computer monitors are often called RGB
monitors because they produce colors by mixing various
combinations of red, green and blue. The printing industry
relies on a 4-color separation process using cyan, magenta,
yellow, and black dyes to reproduce artwork and
photographs.
Colors are also created when some of the frequencies of
light are absorbed. The absorbed colors are the ones not
seen. The colors seen are the ones that are reflected back
to the eye. Absorption is how paints and dies work. The
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paint or dye molecules absorb specific frequencies reflect
other frequencies. The reflected frequency (or
frequencies) is perceived as the color of the object.
Another example is the color of leaves. The leaves of
green plants contain a pigment called chlorophyll, which
absorbs the blue and red colors of the spectrum and
reflects the green.
Pigments and dyes are responsible for most of the color
humans see. Eyes, skin, and hair contain natural protein
pigments that reflect colors (including colors used in
facial makeup and hair dyes). Books, magazines, signs, and
billboards are printed with colored inks that create colors
through the process of color subtraction.
Cars, airplanes and houses are coated with paints
containing a variety of pigments. The concept of color
subtraction is responsible for most of the color produced
by the objects just described. For many years, artists and
printers have searched for substances containing dyes and
pigments that are particularly good at subtracting specific
colors.
When a light wave hits an object, what happens to it
depends on the energy of the light wave, the natural
frequency at which electrons vibrate in the material and
the strength with which the atoms in the material hold on
to their electrons. The waves can be reflected, scattered,
absorbed, refracted, or pass through an object. More than
one of these possibilities can happen at once.
If the frequency or energy of the incoming light wave is
much higher or much lower than the frequency needed to make
the electrons in the material vibrate, then the electrons
will not capture the energy of the light. The wave will
pass through the material unchanged. As a result, the
material will be transparent to that frequency of light.
Most materials are transparent to some frequencies, but not
to others. High frequency light, such as gamma rays and Xrays, will pass through ordinary glass, but lower frequency
ultraviolet and infrared light will not.
In absorption, the frequency of the incoming light wave is
at or near the vibration frequency of the electrons in the
material. The electrons take in the energy of the light
wave and start to vibrate. What happens next depends upon
how tightly the atoms hold on to their electrons.
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Absorption occurs when the electrons are held tightly, and
they pass the vibrations along to the nuclei of the atoms.
This makes the atoms speed up, collide with other atoms in
the material, and then give up as heat the energy they
acquired from the vibrations. The absorption of light
makes an object dark or opaque to the frequency of the
incoming wave. Wood is opaque to visible light. Some
materials are opaque to some frequencies of light, but
transparent to others. Glass is opaque to ultraviolet
light, but transparent to visible light.
The atoms in some materials hold on to their electrons
loosely. In other words, the materials contain many free
electrons that can jump readily from one atom to another
within the material. When the electrons in this type of
material absorb energy from an incoming light wave, they do
not pass that energy on to other atoms.
The energized electrons merely vibrate and then send the
energy back out of the object as a light wave with the same
frequency as the incoming wave. The overall effect is that
the light wave does not penetrate deeply into the material.
In most metals, electrons are held loosely, and are free to
move around, so these metals reflect visible light and
appear to be shiny. The electrons in glass have some
freedom, though not as much as in metals. To a lesser
degree, glass reflects light and appears to be shiny, as
well.
A reflected wave always comes off the surface of a material
at an angle equal to the angle at which the incoming wave
hit the surface. In physics, this is called the Law of
Reflectance. The Law of Reflectance states: “the angle of
incidence equals the angle of reflection.” A mirror
demonstrates this law. For instance, when a person looks
at their image in a mirror, the colors in a mirror are the
same as the colors on the person.
When light hits a rough surface, it scatters. Incoming
light waves get reflected at all sorts of angles. The
earth’s atmosphere acts as a rough surface. It contains
molecules of many different sizes, including nitrogen,
oxygen, water vapor, dust and a variety of pollutants. The
mix of molecules scatters the higher energy light waves
like blue light and, in part, explains why the sky is blue.
Of course, the colors we see are also a function of the
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sensitivity of our eyes and how our brain processes color.
Refraction occurs when the energy of an incoming light wave
matches the natural vibration frequency of the electrons in
a material. The light wave penetrates deeply into the
material, and causes small vibrations in the electrons.
The electrons pass these vibrations on to the atoms in the
material, and they send out light waves of the same
frequency as the incoming wave.
The part of the wave inside the material slows down, while
the part of the wave outside the object maintains its
original frequency and speed. This has the effect of
bending the portion of the wave inside the object toward
what is called the normal line, an imaginary straight line
that runs perpendicular to the surface of the object. The
deviation from the normal line of the light inside the
object will be less than the deviation of the light before
it entered the object. The amount of bending, or angle of
refraction, of the light wave depends on how much the
material slows down the light.
Diamonds glitter because of how much they slow down
incoming light. Light of different frequencies, or
energies, will bend at slightly different angles. For
example, in comparing violet light and red light when they
enter a glass prism, violet light has more energy so it
takes longer to interact with the prism. Because it is
slowed down more than a wave of red light, it will bend
more. Refraction explains the order of colors in a
rainbow. It also explains why rainbows can be seen in
diamonds. Soap bubbles and oil spills also produce
rainbows.
When light waves pass through an object with two reflective
surfaces, parts of the light waves are reflected from the
top surface, while other parts of the light pass through
the film and are reflected from the bottom surface.
Because the parts of the waves that penetrate the film
interact with the film longer, they get knocked out of sync
with the parts of the waves reflected by the top surface.
This is called being out of phase.
When the two sets of waves strike the photoreceptors in the
eyes, they interfere with each other. Interference occurs
when waves add together or subtract from each other and so
form a new wave of a different frequency (color). When
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white light shines on a film with two reflective surfaces,
the various reflected waves interfere with each other to
form rainbow fringes. The fringes change colors when the
angle of sight changes.
In summary:
An object can directly emit light waves in the frequency of
the observed color, or an object can absorb all other
frequencies, reflecting back only the light wave, or
combination of light waves, that appears as the observed
color.
To see a yellow object, either the object is directly
emitting light waves in the yellow frequency, or it is
absorbing the blue part of the spectrum and reflecting red
and green. When combined, red and green are perceived as
yellow.
There are natural sources of light, like the sun, moon and
stars, and artificial light born from such sources as room
lights, flashlights, and car headlights. These sources of
light utilize a wide wavelength spectrum. To narrow the
wavelength range for specific applications that require a
selected region of color or frequency, specialized filters
are used that transmit some wavelengths and selectively
absorb, reflect, refract, or diffract others
Color Temperature
The concept of color temperature is of critical importance
in photography and digital imaging, regardless of whether
the image capture device is a camera, microscope, or
telescope. A lack of proper color temperature balance
between the microscope light source and the film emulsion
or image sensor is the most common reason for unexpected
color shifts in photomicrography and digital imaging.
If the color temperature of the light source is too low for
the film, photomicrographs will have an overall yellowish
or reddish cast and will appear warm. On the other hand,
when the color temperature of the light source is too high
for the film, photomicrographs will have a blue cast and
will appear cool. The degree of mismatch will determine
the extent of these color shifts, with large discrepancies
leading to extremes in color variations.
Perhaps the best example is daylight film used in a
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microscope equipped with a tungsten-halogen illumination
source without the benefit of color balancing filters. In
this case, the photomicrographs will have a quite large
color shift towards warmer reddish and yellowish hues. As
problematic as these color shifts may seem, they are always
easily corrected by the proper use of conversion and light
balancing filters.
The color temperature model is based on the relationship
between the temperature of a theoretical standardized
material, known as a black body radiator, and the energy
distribution of its emitted light as the radiator is
brought from absolute zero to increasingly higher
temperatures.
As the name implies, black body radiators completely absorb
all radiation, without any transmission or reflection, and
then re-emit all incident energy in the form of a
continuous spectrum of light representing all frequencies
in the electromagnetic spectrum. Although the black body
radiator does not actually exist, many metals behave in a
manner very similar to a theoretical radiator.
The overall color of a digital image captured with an
optical microscope is dependent not only upon the spectrum
of visible light wavelengths transmitted through or
reflected by the specimen, but also on the spectral content
of the illuminator. In color digital camera systems that
employ either charge-coupled device (CCD) or complementary
metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors, white
and/or black balance (baseline) adjustment is often
necessary in order to produce acceptable color quality in
digital images.
Filters
A majority of the common natural and artificial light
sources emit a broad range of wavelengths that cover the
entire visible light spectrum, with some extending into the
ultraviolet and infrared regions as well. For simple
lighting applications, such as interior room lights,
flashlights, spot and automobile headlights, and a host of
other consumer, business, and technical applications, the
wide wavelength spectrum is acceptable and quite useful.
However, in many cases it is desirable to narrow the
wavelength range of light for specific applications that
require a selected region of color or frequency. This task
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can be easily accomplished through the use of specialized
filters that transmit some wavelengths and selectively
absorb, reflect, refract, or diffract unwanted wavelengths.
Filters are constructed in a wide variety of shapes and
physical dimensions, and can be employed to remove or pass
wavelength bands ranging in size from hundreds of
nanometers down to a single wavelength. In other words,
the amount of light excluded or limited by filters can be
as narrow as a small band of wavelengths or as wide as the
entire visible spectrum.
Many filters work by absorbing light, while others reflect
unwanted light, but pass a selected region of wavelengths.
The color temperature of light can be fine-tuned with
filters to produce a spectrum of light having the
characteristics of bright daylight, the evening sky, indoor
tungsten illumination, or some variation in between.
Filters are useful for adjusting the contrast of colored
regions as they are represented in black and white
photography or to add special effects in color photography.
Specialized dichroic filters can be used to polarize light,
while heat-absorbing filters can limit infrared wavelengths
(and heat), allowing only visible light to pass through.
Harmful ultraviolet rays can be exclusively removed from
visible light by filters, or the intensity of all
wavelengths (ultraviolet, visible, and infrared) can be
reduced to specific ranges by neutral density filters. The
most sophisticated filters operate by the principles of
interference and can be adjusted to pass narrow bands (or
even a single wavelength) of light while reflecting all
others in a specific direction.
Photography through the microscope is complicated by a wide
spectrum of unexpected color shifts and changes that affect
how the image is rendered on the film emulsion or
electronic image capturing device. These unexpected
imaging results are caused by a number of factors ranging
from incorrect color balance between the light source and
the film emulsion to optical artifacts such as aberration
and lamp voltage fluctuations.
A wide spectrum of filters is available to assist the
microscopist in achieving the highest quality images in
terms of color balance and saturation. These include color
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compensating and conversion filters, neutral density
filters, didymium filters, filters to block ultraviolet
light, and heat-absorbing filters.
In black and white photography through the microscope,
filters are used primarily to control contrast in the final
image captured either on film or with a CCD digital camera
system. Specimens that are highly differentiated with
respect to colored elements from biological stains are
translated into shades of gray on black & white film and
will often appear to have equal brightness. When this
occurs, important specimen details may be lost through a
lack of contrast. Filtration techniques for black and white
film are significantly different from those employed in
color photomicrography.
A wide variety of synthetic and naturally occurring
biological dyes are available to the microscopist for
selective staining of intracellular organelles in cells and
tissues. Biological stains dramatically improve specimen
contrast in brightfield illumination, and have been
utilized for many years in histological preparations
targeted at studies in anatomy, pathology, physiology, and
similar disciplines.
Photonics
Photonics, also known as fiber optics and optoelectronics,
is the control, manipulation, transfer and storage of
information using photons, the fundamental particles of
light. It incorporates optics, laser technology,
biological and chemical sensing, electrical engineering,
materials science, and information storage and processing.
Photonics began in the 60s with the invention of the laser
followed in the 70s with optical fiber as a medium for
transmitting information using light beams. A tremendous
amount of information can be transmitted using optical
fiber, so much so, it serves as the infrastructure for the
Internet. So, we use light not only to see but also to
communicate.
Light as Energy
All life is dependent on the energy from the sun’s light
for heat, cooking, drying cloths, and many other uses, as
well as providing the basic necessities of food, water and
air. The power of solar energy has been known for
centuries and will inevitably replace current energy
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sources in the future. It’s a question of harnessing the
sun’s energy as efficiently as we do oil and gas.
The amount of energy falling on the Earth’s surface from
the sun is approximately 5.6 billion billion (quintillion)
megajoules per year. Averaged over the entire Earth’s
surface, this translates into about 5 kilowatt-hours per
square meter every day. The energy input from the sun in a
single day could supply the needs for all of the Earth’s
inhabitants for a period of about 3 decades.
Only in the last few decades has mankind begun to search
for mechanisms to harness the tremendous potential of solar
energy. This intense concern has resulted from a
continuing increase in energy consumption, growing
environmental problems from the fuels that are now
consumed, and an ever-present awareness about the
inevitable depletion of fossil fuel.
Related topics include photosynthesis, the photoelectric
effect, solar cells, charge-coupled devices, fuel cells,
and nuclear fusion.
Green plants absorb water and carbon dioxide from the
environment, and utilizing energy from the sun, turn these
simple substances into glucose and oxygen. With glucose as
a basic building block, plants synthesize a number of
complex carbon-based biochemicals used to grow and sustain
life. This process is termed photosynthesis, and is the
cornerstone of life on Earth.
Solar cells convert light energy into electrical energy
either indirectly by first converting it into heat, or
through a direct process known as the photovoltaic effect.
The most common types of solar cells are based on the
photovoltaic effect, which occurs when light falling on a
two-layer semiconductor material produces a potential
difference, or voltage, between the two layers.
The voltage produced in the cell is capable of driving a
current through an external electrical circuit that can be
utilized to power electrical devices.
Fuel cells (hydrogen) are designed to utilize a catalyst,
such as platinum, to convert a mixture of hydrogen and
oxygen into water. An important byproduct of this chemical
reaction is the electricity generated when hydrogen
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molecules interact (through oxidation) with the anode to
produce protons and electrons.
Power over optical fiber will replace electrical copper
wires, such as those that connect sensors to monitor fuel
tanks on airplanes, eliminating the fear of short circuits
and sparks. Fiber optic systems are being designed to use
a laser for injecting power in the form of light into a
fiber-optic cable and a photovoltaic (PV) array to convert
the light back into electricity for powering devices.
Photonic power devices are scheduled to replace electrical
transformers now currently used in power grids.
Current transformers are large, expensive to maintain, and
heat up. To prevent temperatures from rising to dangerous
levels and to reduce power leaks, oil and gas are used as
insulators. But oil is flammable and can make transformers
explode at high temperatures. Photonic Power offers the
option of measuring high currents by placing a transducer
directly on the line, eliminating the use of transformers
to overcome voltage differences. The power-over-fiber
system converts electricity directly to light.
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X-Ray
Of all the superpowers possessed by Superman, other than
flying, perhaps the most envied power is the ability to see
through objects. The inability to see through things is
very telling in itself about the limits of human vision,
and the reflective properties of objects. It would,
indeed, be a very difficult world to navigate is objects
were all opaque. But the desire to see inside things won’t
go away, and no doubt x-ray glasses are just around the
technological corner.
It isn’t just the ability to see through objects that
fascinates us. More so, it’s the ability to see inside
other people’s minds that holds the most adventure. There
is also a strong sexual component since, in this age of
morality, there is the hidden desire to see through
clothing. Allegedly, such devices are already in
existence.
In 1895, a German physicist named Wilhelm Roentgen made the
discovery while experimenting with electron beams in a gas
discharge tube. Roentgen noticed that a fluorescent screen
in his lab started to glow when the electron beam was
turned on. This response in itself wasn’t so surprising -fluorescent material normally glows in reaction to
electromagnetic radiation -- but Roentgen’s tube was
surrounded by heavy black cardboard. Roentgen assumed this
would have blocked most of the radiation.
Roentgen placed various objects between the tube and the
screen, and the screen still glowed. Finally, he put his
hand in front of the tube, and saw the silhouette of his
bones projected onto the fluorescent screen. Immediately
after discovering X-rays, he had discovered their most
beneficial application.
Roentgen’s remarkable discovery precipitated one of the
most important medical advancements in human history. Xray technology lets doctors see straight through human
tissue to examine broken bones, cavities and swallowed
objects with extraordinary ease. Modified X-ray procedures
can be used to examine softer tissue, such as the lungs,
blood vessels or the intestines.
X-rays are basically the same thing as visible light rays.
Both are wavelike forms of electromagnetic energy carried
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by particles called photons. The difference between X-rays
and visible light rays is the energy level of the
individual photons. This is also expressed as the
wavelength of the rays.
Our eyes are sensitive to the particular wavelength of
visible light, but not to the shorter wavelength of higher
energy X-ray waves or the longer wavelength of the lower
energy radio waves.
Visible light photons and X-ray photons are both produced
by the movement of electrons in atoms. Electrons occupy
different energy levels, or orbitals, around an atom’s
nucleus. When an electron drops to a lower orbital, it
needs to release some energy -- it releases the extra
energy in the form of a photon. The energy level of the
photon depends on how far the electron dropped between
orbitals.
When a photon collides with another atom, the atom may
absorb the photon’s energy by boosting an electron to a
higher level. For this to happen, the energy level of the
photon has to match the energy difference between the two
electron positions. If not, the photon can’t shift
electrons between orbitals.
The atoms that make up body tissue absorb visible light
photons very well. The energy level of the photon fits
with various energy differences between electron positions.
Radio waves don’t have enough energy to move electrons
between orbitals in larger atoms, so they pass through most
stuff. X-ray photons also pass through most things, but
for the opposite reason: They have too much energy.
They can, however, knock an electron away from an atom
altogether. Some of the energy from the X-ray photon works
to separate the electron from the atom, and the rest sends
the electron flying through space. A larger atom is more
likely to absorb an X-ray photon in this way, because
larger atoms have greater energy differences between
orbitals -- the energy level more closely matches the
energy of the photon. Smaller atoms, where the electron
orbitals are separated by relatively low jumps in energy,
are less likely to absorb X-ray photons.
The soft tissue in the body is composed of smaller atoms,
and so does not absorb X-ray photons particularly well.
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The calcium atoms that make up the bones are much larger,
so they are better at absorbing X-ray photons.
The most important contributions of X-ray technology have
been in the world of medicine, but X-rays have played a
crucial role in a number of other areas as well. X-rays
have been pivotal in research involving quantum mechanics
theory, crystallography and cosmology. In the industrial
world, X-ray scanners are often used to detect minute flaws
in heavy metal equipment. And X-ray scanners have become
standard equipment in airport security.
The heart of an X-ray machine is an electrode pair--a
cathode and an anode--that sits inside a glass vacuum tube.
The cathode is a heated filament, like you might find in an
older fluorescent lamp. The machine passes current through
the filament, heating it up. The heat sputters electrons
off of the filament surface. The positively-charged anode,
a flat disc made of tungsten, draws the electrons across
the tube.
The voltage difference between the cathode and anode is
extremely high, so the electrons fly through the tube with
a great deal of force. When a speeding electron collides
with a tungsten atom, it knocks loose an electron in one of
the atom’s lower orbitals. An electron in a higher orbital
immediately falls to the lower energy level, releasing its
extra energy in the form of a photon. Because it’s a big
drop, the photon has a high energy level. It’s an X-ray
photon.
The high-impact collisions involved in X-ray production
generate a lot of heat. A motor rotates the anode to keep
it from melting (the electron beam isn’t always focused on
the same area). A cool oil bath surrounding the envelope
also absorbs heat.
The entire mechanism is surrounded by a thick lead shield.
This keeps the X-rays from escaping in all directions. A
small window in the shield lets some of the X-ray photons
escape in a narrow beam. The beam passes through a series
of filters on its way to the patient.
A camera on the other side of the patient records the
pattern of X-ray light that passes all the way through the
patient’s body. The X-ray camera uses the same film
technology as an ordinary camera, but X-ray light sets off
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the chemical reaction instead of visible light.
Generally, doctors keep the film image as a negative. That
is, the areas that are exposed to more light appear darker
and the areas that are exposed to less light appear
lighter. Hard material, such as bone, appears white, and
softer material appears black or gray. Doctors can bring
different materials into focus by varying the intensity of
the X-ray beam.
In a normal X-ray picture, most soft tissue doesn’t show up
clearly. To focus in on organs, or to examine the blood
vessels that make up the circulatory system, doctors must
introduce contrast media into the body. Contrast media are
liquids that absorb X-rays more effectively than the
surrounding tissue.
To bring organs in the digestive and endocrine systems into
focus, a patient will swallow a contrast media mixture,
typically a barium compound. If the doctors want to
examine blood vessels or other elements in the circulatory
system, they will inject contrast media into the patient’s
bloodstream.
Contrast media are often used in conjunction with a
fluoroscope. In fluoroscopy, the X-rays pass through the
body onto a fluorescent screen, creating a moving X-ray
image. Doctors may use fluoroscopy to trace the passage of
contrast media through the body. Doctors can also record
the moving X-ray images on film or video.
X-rays can also be harmful. In the early days of X-ray
science, a lot of doctors would expose patients and
themselves to the beams for long periods of time.
Eventually, doctors and patients started developing
radiation sickness.
X-rays are a form of ionizing radiation. When normal light
hits an atom, it can’t change the atom in any significant
way. But when an X-ray hits an atom, it can knock
electrons off the atom to create an ion, an electricallycharged atom. Free electrons then collide with other atoms
to create more ions.
An ion’s electrical charge can lead to unnatural chemical
reactions inside cells. Among other things, the charge can
break DNA chains. A cell with a broken strand of DNA will
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either die or the DNA will develop a mutation. If a lot of
cells die, the body can develop various diseases. If the
DNA mutates, a cell may become cancerous, and this cancer
may spread. If the mutation is in a sperm or an egg cell,
it may lead to birth defects. Because of all these risks,
doctors use X-rays sparingly today.
Even with these risks, X-ray scanning is still a safer
option than surgery.
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Lasers
Dr. Charles H. Townes (PhD in Physics, California Institute
of Technology) started working for Bell Telephone Labs,
designing radar bombing systems during WWII. He turned his
attention to applying the microwave technique of wartime
radar research to spectroscopy, a powerful new tool for the
study of the structure of atoms and molecules and as a
potential new basis for controlling electromagnetic waves.
More research followed in microwave physics, particularly
studying the interactions between microwaves, molecules,
and atoms. In the early 50s he invented the “maser,” a
device and an acronym for “microwave amplification by
stimulated emission of radiation.” A few years later with
his brother-in-law, Dr. A.L. Schavlow (Stanford), he showed
theoretically that masers could operate in the optical and
infrared regions. The laser was born. Laser stands for
“light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.
Ordinary natural and artificial light is released by energy
changes on the atomic and molecular level that occur
without any outside intervention. A second type of light
exists, however, and occurs when an atom or molecule
retains its excess energy until stimulated to emit the
energy in the form of light.
Lasers are designed to produce and amplify this stimulated
form of light into intense and focused beams. The special
nature of laser light has made laser technology a vital
tool in nearly every aspect of everyday life including
communications, entertainment, manufacturing, and medicine.
Laser surgery used for correcting vision problems has
become routine, if not big business.
The lasers commonly employed in optical microscopy are
high-intensity monochromatic light sources, which are
useful as tools for a variety of techniques including
optical trapping, lifetime imaging studies, photobleaching
recovery, and total internal reflection fluorescence. In
addition, lasers are also the most common light source for
scanning confocal fluorescence microscopy, and have been
utilized, although less frequently, in conventional
widefield fluorescence investigations.
In a few decades since the 1960s, the laser has gone from
being a science fiction fantasy, to a laboratory research
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curiosity, to an expensive but valuable tool in esoteric
scientific applications, to its current role as an integral
part of everyday tasks as mundane as reading grocery prices
or measuring a room for wallpaper.
Any substantial list of the major technological
achievements of the twentieth century would include the
laser near the top. The pervasiveness of the laser in all
areas of current life can be best appreciated by the range
of applications that utilize laser technology.
At the spectacular end of this range are military
applications, which include using lasers as weapons to
possibly defend against missile attack, and at the other
end are daily activities such as playing music on compact
disks and printing or copying paper documents.
Somewhere in between are numerous scientific and industrial
applications, including microscopy, astronomy,
spectroscopy, surgery, integrated circuit fabrication,
surveying, and communications.
The two major concerns in safe laser operation are exposure
to the beam and the electrical hazards associated with high
voltages within the laser and its power supply. While there
are no known cases of a laser beam contributing to a
person’s death, there have been several instances of deaths
attributable to contact with high voltage laser-related
components.
Beams of sufficiently high power can burn the skin, or in
some cases create a hazard by burning or damaging other
materials, but the primary concern with regard to the laser
beam is potential damage to the eyes, which are the part of
the body most sensitive to light.
A pre-recorded compact disk is read by tracking a finely
focused laser across the spiral pattern of lands and pits
stamped into the disk by a master diskette. The laser beam
is focused onto the surface of a spinning compact disk, and
variations between the height of pits and lands determine
whether the light is scattered by the disk surface or
reflected back into a detector.
There are many other kinds of lasers, like ion lasers,
argon-ion lasers, diode lasers, helium-neon lasers,
Ti:Sapphire Mode-Locked Lasers, and Nd:YLF Mode-Locked
Pulsed Lasers (neodymium: yttrium lithium fluoride).
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In 2005, two Americans and a German won the Nobel Prize in
Physics for Laser Research. Roy J. Glauber of Harvard
University was honored for work applying quantum theory to
light emitted by lasers. His work allegedly will help
explain a major scientific paradox: the dual nature of
light behaving like both a particle and a wave.
John L. Hall, JILA Institute, University of Colorado
(Boulder), and Theodore W. Hansch, Ludwig-Maximilians
University in Munich will share the Prize for their
development of techniques to precisely control the
frequency of lasers, allowing measurement of physical
properties not only of atoms, but of space and time, with
unprecedented accuracy.
Before the laser, researchers used classical 19th century
optics theory to explain the behavior of light. Many
researchers believed that quantum theory, which had proved
successful in describing the behavior of matter, could not
be applied to light.
The development of lasers operating at single frequencies
made advances in the study of atoms and molecules possible.
But those studies were limited by the inability to lock a
laser onto a specific frequency. The goal was to stabilize
a laser so its frequency doesn’t change, thereby allowing a
practical way to measure the frequency of light.
Such accurate measurement will increase the accuracy of
atomic clocks from the current 10 digit to 15 digit
accuracy. This kind of precision will not only enhance the
accuracy of clocks but also the global positioning system,
improve the navigation of long spaceflights, and help in
the pointing of space telescopes.
Holography
Holography was invented in 1948 by Hungarian physicist
Dennis Gabor. He received the Nobel Prize in physics in
1971. The discovery was a result of research involving
electron microscopes, but it was the laser that ultimately
made holography possible. Holography is the science of
producing 3-dimensional images called holograms.
Holography is also used to optically store and retrieve
information. Holograms gained popularity in such movies as
Star Wars, Star Trek and AI: Artificial Intelligence.
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Optics in Everyday Life
An FBI surveillance agent plants a lipstick camera in an
overhead ceiling light in the hotel room of a suspected
terrorist.
Meanwhile, an airport security advisor doesn’t think
traditional x-ray scanners are sufficient anymore, and
decides to install a portable detection device that employs
resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI) to ionize
specific “target” molecules given off by explosives and
drugs. The detection method uses a laser beam to ionize the
vapor from the explosive.
Someone is always losing their glasses, and nothing could
be worse than when a contact lens falls into a field of
grass or mud puddle. In the movie Nerds, those who are
stereotyped as nerds almost always wear glasses--oversized
ones at that. And, they are usually scientists or into
science, always peering through microscopes and telescopes.
Cool people certainly don’t wear glasses and never look
through microscopes at creepy, crawly insects.
Both grandma and grandpa claim they don’t see so well
anymore, but watch out, because it could be a trick. Old
folks see more than they let on.
Blue eyes get the most attention in popular songs, although
“Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue,” “Brown-Eyed Girl,” and
“Green-Eyed Lady” speak otherwise.
The eyes get blurry when a dust particle invades them. We
can’t see at night without night vision goggles. And
nothing will make a person go blind quicker than staring at
a computer screen all day.
A forest ranger scans miles of forest with binoculars,
looking for the slightest hint of smoke. A 12-year girl
doesn’t appreciate very much the boy sitting behind her in
class, trying to look at her hair through a magnifying
glass.
Most anyone remembers their first car and getting pulled
over by a cop because of broken headlight. In really heavy
fog, not even low beams can cut through the density. It’s
best to just pull over. Some cars have tinted windows,
especially limousines, to give the illusion that whoever is
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inside the car is either an important politician, a famous
movie star, or works for the CIA.
Tourists buy millions of instamatic cameras with one-hour
photo services available on every corner. Why anyone needs
their photos that fast can only be explained by the need
for instant gratification. Journalists might need photos
ASAP when covering a breaking news story. But journalists
don’t use instamatics. With digital photography, photos
are available instantly. However, it still takes time to
print them so we’re back to the waiting game…unless the
photos are uploaded to the Internet.
An amateur astronomer discovers another meteor, like so
many amateurs have done before, and names it after his
wife, Gertrude.
In the movie Lethal Weapon, Mel Gibson’s character claimed
he was one of a hand full of guys in the Vietnam War who
could take out an enemy at 1000 yards. It takes good
vision and the right kind of scope to do that.
In many households, TVs are on 24 hours a day, whether
someone is watching it or not. Some say TVs rot the brain.
A large screen TV rests in the living room, with smaller
ones positioned in the kitchen, all the bedrooms, the
bathroom and in some cases, one in the garage. Now, TV
junkies can watch favorite programs on their iPods or in
their car.
During the Iraqi War, infrared photos of a variety of Iraqi
targets (bunkers, buildings, training camps, etc.), are
broadcast back to the States. TV viewers watch
disinterestedly, when there’s nothing else on 200 other
plus channels. The targets are destroyed by precisionguided bombs, with targets pin-pointed through the
crosshairs of an aircraft high-tech laser targeting system.
Next, U.S. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf describes the
purpose of the attack, followed by a quick blurb featuring
a U.S. Marine sitting on top of tank, wishing he could be
home.
From there, Hollywood picks up on the news story and a new
movie is released. The techno-thriller, i, Fighter Jet
(Jamie Foxx), is a story seemingly ripped right from the
headlines. In the story, an elite trio of U.S. Navy pilots
are picked to fly highly classified stealth fighter jets,
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called Talons. A fourth, virtual wingman--an artificially
intelligent based Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle, or UCAV-is added to one of their flight missions. The pilots face
being replaced and envision a new world where war is fought
by androids. But then, ever since Star Wars, robot wars
have become a staple of sci-fi movies.
Following the movie, a slew of high resolution video games
hit the streets, featuring laser-shooting super jets
fighting a host of enemies, from aliens to artificially
intelligent super soldiers. Video games also rot the
brain, so they say. But video game technology is largely
responsible for the high end graphics cards now used in
most computers.
Speaking of aliens, the Hubble Space Telescope is really a
glorified instamatic camera...sort’a. It takes pictures of
things we can’t see, like black holes. But one can’t help
wonder how a telescope can see a black hole if it’s black.
Science does have a sense of humor.
Breaking a mirror allegedly results in 7 years of bad luck,
but then, is there anyone who has actually documented 7
years of bad luck, with good luck coming in the 8th year?
A major selling point of Smartphones and iPods is the
ability to download/upload photos from the Internet and
view them on the go. Portable media devices, ranging from
laptops to Microsoft’s Media Center to the Palm Pilot, can
store 1000s of photos. The family photo album goes
digital. Digital cameras eliminate the need for film and
can plug directly into a computer via a USB port.
A brutal beating during a riot is captured on a digital
camcorder and uploaded to the Internet. Smaller digital
cameras capture speeders and red light runners on
unsuspecting street corners. A scientist explores
nanotubes using a scanning tunneling microscope.
Nanorobots are injected into the human blood stream and
flash back photos of bad cancer cells on a monitor viewed
by a doctor 100s of miles away. Well, not yet, anyway.
All of the above vignettes illustrate the wide range of
areas and applications influenced by the science of optics.
From the study of electromagnetic radiation to distant
galaxies, optics has given humans the ability to see far
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beyond normal vision.
film...or digitally.
And, it can all be captured on
But it’s not just a lot of fun gadgets. Electron
microscopes are the key to understanding disease.
Surveillance cameras question the issue of privacy. Media-meaning movies, TV, print and the Internet--bombard us
with a tremendous array of images that can deeply affect
our daily lives. Understanding how light works gave us the
light bulb, perhaps the single most important device in the
history of modernization. Some might argue the car or the
telephone. But even cars and telephones are optically
influenced, whether it’s headlights and glare-proof windows
or sending millions of telephone messages across fiber
optic cable.
Eyeglasses, contact lenses and laser surgery gave a whole
new slant to the meaning of natural selection. Those who
would’ve gone blind can now see far into the future.
But, seeing into the future takes more than glasses. It
takes imagination. It takes vision of another kind. Then
again, with telescopes mounted on space probes capturing
images of what might be the big bang, who knows what this
will tell us about the history of the universe...and its
future. We may yet design artificial eyeballs. Someone
just might figure out a way to project our dreams onto a
screen.
As the crowd roars, dazzled by the performance of a new and
upcoming singer/dancer, the performer screams back, “You
ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”
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Optics:
The Science
Optics is the branch of physics that studies the origin,
propagation, and physical properties of both visible and
invisible light. Physical optics is concerned with the
nature and properties of light. Geometrical optics deals
with the principles governing image-forming properties of
lenses, mirrors, and other devices, such as optical data
processors.
Optics covers a wide range of subjects, starting with
electromagnetic radiation. From there, it moves into such
areas as optical microscopy, digital imaging,
photomicrography, stereomicroscopy, refraction, reflection,
diffraction, interference, birefringence, polarization,
primary colors, human vision, mirrors, prisms,
beamsplitters, laser systems, geometrical optics,
filtration, color temperature, speed of light,
magnification, image formation, objective specifications,
Köhler illumination, optical aberrations, immersion media,
light sources, eyepieces, condensers, ergonomics, Hoffman
modulation, oblique illumination, fluorescence microscopy,
differential interference contrast, phase contrast and many
other techniques, devices and processes.
Humankind’s introduction to light obviously began with
natural sources, like the sun, moon, stars, lightning and
fire.
Greek and Arab scholars formulated theories on light: how
it is propagated, how it can be reflected and refracted,
and how it is perceived by the eyes. From around 1000 A.D.
to the 1600s, Arab and Chinese scholars began experimenting
with light, lenses. Science was beginning to take shape,
with such discoveries as the world not being flat and that
the earth revolved around the sun.
Microscopes and telescopes appeared in the 1600s and Isaac
Newton published his Principia followed in the early 1700s
by Opticks, discussing his corpuscular theory of light.
Around this time planets were being discovered and
electricity lighted a spark. In the early 1800s Newton’s
corpuscular theory of light is contradicted by the wave
theory of light. Scientists discover “invisible” infrared
and ultraviolet light. The first photograph is taken.
Photography underwent continued development and the 19th
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century wore on. The speed of light is measured,
spectroscopy is introduced, and light is revealed as a type
of electromagnetic wave.
The inventions of radio and photographic film move the
world into the 20th century. Light becomes both a wave and
a particle, the theory of relativity is born, and TV grips
the public’s imagination. Through the 1960s a stream of
new technologies dot the landscape, including the laser,
holography, fiber optics, and computers. Space exploration
lands a man on the moon.
The number of patents that follow into the New Millennium
grows exponentially, including video games, iPods,
telescopes and digital graphic workstations powered by
super computers, cable TV and Tivo, laser eye surgery, and
nanotechnology. Cyberspace...becomes a way of life.
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Light Microscopes
The first light microscopes were developed in the late
1500s by Robert Hooke, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and others.
Since then, the light microscope has evolved to include a
variety of special techniques and optics used in biomedical
research, medical diagnostics and materials science.
Microscopes are instruments designed to produce magnified
visual or photographic images of objects too small to be
seen with the naked eye. A microscope magnifies an image
(whatever is being used as a specimen) and makes details
visible to the eye or a camera. How lens work is based on
the principles of refraction and reflection.
Light microscopes can magnify objects up to 1,000 times.
Electron microscopes go up to 10,000 times with some
transmission and scanning electron microscopes ranging in
the millions.
Microscopes range from ancient sixteenth-century singlelens Dutch models to modern microprocessor-powered research
microscopes. Very simply, microscope plus optics equals
optical microscopy. Some microscopes are multiple-lens
(compound microscopes) with objectives and condensers.
Others are simple single lens instruments (includes the
magnifying glass). Many microscopes now use charge-coupled
devices (CCDs) and digital cameras to capture images.
Modern compound microscopes feature a two-stage magnifying
design built around separate lens systems, the objective
and the eyepiece (called an ocular), mounted at opposite
ends of a tube, known as the body tube. The objective is
composed of several lens elements that together form a
magnified real image (the intermediate image).
The intermediate image is further magnified by the
eyepiece. The viewer is able to see an enlarged virtual
image through the eyepieces. Total magnification is the
combination of the objective and eyepiece. By combining a
number of lenses a microscope can produce extreme
magnification, and microscopic levels can reach the atomic
and sub-atomic levels.
Microscopes are designed with a great deal of precision.
They must be mounted solidly, with precise centering and
adjustment capability. Specimens are placed on a glass
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slide with a cover, and like the various lenses, can be
subject to aberration. Illumination needs to be bright, no
glare, and evenly dispersed. Apertures with numbers are
used to make adjustments like brightness and magnification
level. There is a wide range of accessories for an equally
wide range of microscopes to help fine tune or provide
different perspectives.
Precision and variety in design is critical since
microscopes are used to view a wide range of specimens in
different contexts, such as living cells immersed in water,
or semiconductors, ceramics, metals, and polymers under
varying conditions.
The first reported measurements performed with an optical
microscope took place in the late 1600s by the Dutch
scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who used fine grains of
sand as a gauge to determine the size of human
erythrocytes. Now, various micrometry techniques are used
to make more precise measurements.
In photomicrography, the primary medium was film until the
past decade when improvements in electronic cameras and
computer technology made digital imaging cheaper and easier
to use than conventional photography. In digital imaging,
digitizing a video or electronic image captured through an
optical microscope allows a significant increase in the
ability to enhance features, extract information, or modify
the image.
A light microscope is similar to a refracting telescope. A
telescope gathers large amounts of light from a dim,
distant object, and uses a large objective lens to gather
as much light as possible and bring it to a bright focus.
Because the objective lens is large, it brings the image of
the object to a focus at some distance away, which is why
telescopes are much longer than microscopes. The eyepiece
of the telescope then magnifies that image as it brings it
to your eye.
A microscope gathers light from a tiny area of a thin,
well-illuminated specimen that is close-by. So the
microscope does not need a large objective lens. Instead,
the objective lens of a microscope is small and spherical,
which means that it has a much shorter focal length on
either side. It brings the image of the object into focus
at a short distance within the microscope’s tube. The
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image is then magnified by a second lens, called an ocular
lens or eyepiece.
A microscope has a light source and a condenser. The
condenser is a lens system that focuses the light from the
source onto a tiny, bright spot of the specimen, which is
the same area that the objective lens examines. A
telescope has a fixed objective lens and interchangeable
eyepieces.
Microscopes have interchangeable objective lenses and fixed
eyepieces. By changing the objective lenses (going from
relatively flat, low-magnification objectives to rounder,
high-magnification objectives), a microscope can bring
increasingly smaller areas into view. Light gathering is
not the primary task of a microscope’s objective lens, like
it is with a telescope.
A simple way to demonstrate how a microscope works is to
use two magnifying glasses and printed words on paper. One
magnifying glass makes the print look larger. When a
second magnifying glass is held between the eye and the
first magnifying glass, moving the first magnifier brings
the print into focus and makes the print even larger than
just one magnifier.
Image Quality is based on brightness, focus, resolution and
contrast. Brightness is how light and dark an image is.
Brightness is related to the illumination system and can be
changed by changing the voltage to the lamp (rheostat) and
adjusting the condenser and diaphragm/pinhole apertures.
Brightness is also related to the numerical aperture of the
objective lens (the larger the numerical aperture, the
brighter the image).
Focus is how blurred or detailed an image is. Focus is
related to focal length and can be controlled with the
focus knobs. The thickness of the cover glass on the
specimen slide can also affect focus. Resolution is how
close two points can be in the image before they are no
longer seen as two separate points.
Resolution is related to the numerical aperture of the
objective lens (the higher the numerical aperture, the
better the resolution) and the wavelength of light passing
through the lens (the shorter the wavelength, the better
the resolution). Contrast is the difference in lighting
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between adjacent areas of the specimen. Contrast is
related to the illumination system and can be adjusted by
changing the intensity of the light and the
diaphragm/pinhole aperture. Chemical stains are applied to
a specimen to enhance contrast.
Most light microscopes feature the same components although
can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, with some
microscopes designed for specific purposes. Light
microscopes can reveal the structures of living cells and
non-living specimens such as rocks and semiconductors.
Microscopes come in two basic configurations: upright and
inverted. An upright microscope has the illumination
system below the stage and the lens system above the stage.
An inverted microscope has the illumination system above
the stage and the lens system below the stage. Inverted
microscopes are better for looking through thick specimens,
such as dishes of cultured cells, because the lenses can
get closer to the bottom of the dish, where the cells grow.
The stage is a platform where the specimen rests. Clips
hold the specimen still on the stage. Various lenses form
the image, while objective lenses gather light from the
specimen. The eyepiece transmits and magnifies the image
from the objective lens to the eye. The nosepiece rotating
mount can hold several objective lenses.
The tube holds the eyepiece at the proper distance from the
objective lens and blocks out stray light. The tube is also
connected to the arm of the microscope with a rack and
pinion gear. It allows refocusing when changing lens,
observers or specimens. The arm is a curved piece that
that aligns and holds all of the optical parts at a fixed
distance. Focus is achieved when the objective lens is
positioned at a distance from the specimen that produces
the clearest image.
Microscopes are sensitive and must be sturdy since even the
smallest movement of a specimen can throw an image out of
focus. The base supports the microscope. Further
adjustments are made with course and fine tuning knobs. A
micromanipulator is a device that allows moving the
specimen in controlled, small increments along the x and y
axes, such as in for scanning a slide.
A simple illumination system is a mirror reflecting room
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light up through the specimen. Lamps are usually tungstenfilament light bulbs. For specialized applications,
mercury or xenon lamps may be used to produce ultraviolet
light while other microscopes use lasers to scan a
specimen.
The rheostat alters the current applied to the lamp to
control light intensity and the condenser aligns and
focuses the light from the lamp onto the specimen.
Diaphragms or pinhole apertures are placed in the light
path to alter the amount of light that reaches the
condenser (for enhancing contrast in the image.
The depth of field is the vertical distance from above to
below the focal plane that yields an acceptable image. The
field of view is the area of the specimen that can be seen
through the microscope with an objective lens. The focal
length is the distance required for a lens to bring the
light to a focus (measured in microns). The focal point is
where the light from a lens comes together to form an
image.
Magnification is generated by the magnifying powers of the
objective and eyepiece lenses. A numerical aperture
measures the light-collecting ability of the lens.
Resolution is the closest two objects can be before they’re
no longer detected as separate objects (usually measured in
nanometers.
When looking at a specimen with transmitted light, the
light must pass through the specimen in order to form an
image. The thicker the specimen, the less light passes
through. The less light that passes through, the darker
the image. Consequently, specimens must be thin, in the
0.1 to 0.5 mm range. Many living specimens must be cut
into thin sections before observation. Specimens of rock
or semiconductors are too thick to be sectioned and
observed by transmitted light, so they are observed by the
light reflected from their surfaces.
A major problem in observing specimens under a microscope
is that their images do not have much contrast. This is
especially true of living things (such as cells), although
natural pigments, such as the green in leaves, can provide
good contrast. One way to improve contrast is to treat the
specimen with colored pigments or dyes that bind to
specific structures within the specimen.
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Different types of microscopy have been developed to
improve the contrast in specimens. The specializations are
mainly in the illumination systems and the types of light
passed through the specimen. For example, a darkfield
microscope uses a special condenser to block out most of
the bright light and illuminate the specimen with oblique
light, much like the moon blocks the light from the sun in
a solar eclipse. This optical set-up provides a totally
dark background and enhances the contrast of the image to
bring out fine details (bright areas at boundaries within
the specimen).
The basic idea involves splitting the light beam into two
pathways that illuminate the specimen. Light waves that
pass through dense structures within the specimen slow down
compared to those that pass through less-dense structures.
As all of the light waves are collected and transmitted to
the eyepiece, they are recombined, causing interference.
The interference patterns provide contrast. Some patterns
will show dark areas (more dense) on a light background
(less dense), or create a type of false three-dimensional
(3-D) image.
Brightfield is a basic microscope and technique that has
very little contrast. Contrast is usually achieved by
staining the specimens. In turn, the Darkfield technique
enhances contrast. Rheinberg illumination is similar to
darkfield, but uses a series of filters to produce an
“optical staining” of the specimen. Phase contrast is best
for looking at living specimens, such as cultured cells.
In a phase-contrast microscope, the annular rings in the
objective lens and the condenser separate the light. The
light that passes through the central part of the light
path is recombined with the light that travels around the
periphery of the specimen. The interference produced by
these two paths produces images in which the dense
structures appear darker than the background.
Differential interference contrast (DIC) uses polarizing
filters and prisms to separate and recombine the light
paths, giving a 3-D appearance to the specimen (DIC is also
called Nomarski after the man who invented it). Hoffman
modulation contrast is similar to DIC except that it uses
plates with small slits in both the axis and the off-axis
of the light path to produce two sets of light waves
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passing through the specimen, producing a 3-D image.
A polarized-light microscope uses two polarizers, one on
either side of the specimen, positioned perpendicular to
each other so that only light that passes through the
specimen reaches the eyepiece. Light is polarized in one
plane as it passes through the first filter and reaches the
specimen. Regularly-spaced, patterned or crystalline
portions of the specimen rotate the light that passes
through. Some of this rotated light passes through the
second polarizing filter, so these regularly spaced areas
show up bright against a black background.
A fluorescence microscope uses high-energy, shortwavelength light (usually ultraviolet) to excite electrons
within certain molecules inside a specimen, causing those
electrons to shift to higher orbits. When they fall back
to their original energy levels, they emit lower-energy,
longer-wavelength light (usually in the visible spectrum),
which forms the image.
Lens
The term lens is the common name given to a component of
glass or transparent plastic material, usually circular in
design, with two primary surfaces ground and polished in a
specific manner designed to produce either a convergence or
divergence of light. Lenses operate according to the
principles of refraction and reflection.
A microscope forms an image of a specimen placed on the
stage (specimen mounting area) by passing light from the
illuminator through a series of glass lenses and focusing
this light either into the eyepieces, on the film plane in
a traditional camera system, or onto the surface of a
digital image sensor. Errors in the lens are called
aberrations, and are found throughout all microscopes and
other optical devices.
A simple thin lens has two focal planes that are defined by
the geometry of the lens and the relationship between the
lens and the focused image. Light rays passing through the
lens will intersect and are physically combined at the
focal plane. Extensions of the rays passing through the
lens will intersect with the rays emerging from the lens at
the principal plane.
The focal length of a lens is defined as the distance
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between the principal plane and the focal plane, and every
lens has a set of these planes on each side (front and
rear).
A magnifying glass consists of a single thin bi-convex lens
that produces a modest magnification useful for reading or
viewing things enlarged to a magnification level similar to
making words bigger. Single lenses like the bi-convex lens
are useful for simple magnification commonly found in
magnifying glasses, eyeglasses, single-lens cameras,
loupes, viewfinders, and contact lenses.
Positive, or converging, thin lenses unite incident light
rays that are parallel to the optical axis and focus them
at the focal plane to form a real image. Negative lenses
diverge parallel incident light rays and form a virtual
image by extending traces of the light rays passing through
the lens to a focal point behind the lens. In general,
these lenses have at least one concave surface and are
thinner in the center than at the edges.
Mirrors
In addition to being used in microscope illumination
systems, mirrors are found everywhere, from fun houses to
bathrooms to portable make-up kits. They vary widely in
design, construction and reflectivity. Some mirrors
magnify, like make-up kits. Others are highly polished,
coated with metals that reflect both visible and infrared
wavelengths.
Reflection of light is an inherent and important
fundamental property of mirrors, and is quantitatively
gauged by the ratio between the amount of light reflected
from the surface and that incident upon the surface, a term
known as reflectivity.
The images formed by a mirror are either real or virtual,
depending upon the proximity of the object to the mirror,
and can be accurately predicted with respect to size and
location from calculations based on the geometry of any
particular mirror. Real images are formed when the incident
and reflected rays intersect in front of the mirror,
whereas virtual images occur at points where extensions
from incident and reflected rays converge behind the
mirror. Planar (flat) mirrors produce virtual images
because the focal point, at which extensions from all
incident light rays intersect, is positioned behind the
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reflective surface.
In order to reflect light waves with high efficiency, the
surface of a mirror must be perfectly smooth over a long
range, with imperfections that are much smaller than the
wavelength of light being reflected. This requirement
applies regardless of the shape of the mirror, which can be
irregular or curved, in addition to the planar mirror
surfaces commonly seen in households.
Curved mirrors are roughly divided into two categories,
concave and convex, terms that are also used to describe
the geometry of simple thin lenses. With mirrors, the
curved surface is referred to as either concave or convex
depending upon whether the center of curvature occurs on
the side of the reflecting surface or the opposite side.
Concave mirrors have a curved surface with a center of
curvature equidistant from every point on the mirror’s
surface. An object beyond the center of curvature forms a
real and inverted image between the focal point and the
center of curvature. Moving the object farther away from
the center of curvature affects the size of the real image
formed by the mirror.
Regardless of the position of the object reflected by a
convex mirror, the image formed is always virtual, upright,
and reduced in size.
Beamsplitters and Prisms
Beamsplitters and prisms are not only found in a wide
variety of common optical instruments, such as cameras,
binoculars, microscopes, telescopes, periscopes, range
finders, and surveying equipment, but also in many
sophisticated scientific instruments including
interferometers, spectrophotometers, and fluorimeters. Both
of these important optical tools are critical for laser
applications that require tight control of beam direction
to precise tolerances with a minimum of light loss due to
scatter or unwanted reflections.
Binocular microscopes use prisms and beamsplitters. In
order to divert light collected by the objective into both
eyepieces, it is first divided by a beamsplitter and then
channeled through reflecting prisms into parallel
cylindrical optical light pipes. Thus, the binocular
observation tube utilizes both prism and beamsplitter
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technology to direct beams of light having equal intensity
into the eyepieces.
Prisms and beamsplitters are essential components that
bend, split, reflect, and fold light through the pathways
of both simple and sophisticated optical systems. Prisms
are polished blocks of glass or other transparent materials
cut and ground to specific tolerances and exact angles.
They are used to deflect a light beam, rotate or invert an
image, separate polarization states, or disperse light into
its component wavelengths.
A beamsplitter is a common optical component that partially
transmits and partially reflects an incident light beam,
usually in unequal proportions. In addition to the task of
dividing light, beamsplitters can be employed to recombine
two separate light beams or images into a single path.
There are many different kinds of prisms and beamsplitters,
such as reflecting prisms, right-angle prisms, equilateral
prisms, dielectric plate beamsplitters, circular prisms,
wedge prisms, birefringent polarizing prisms and others.
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Light Sources
Modern microscopes usually have an integral light source
that can be controlled to a relatively high degree. The
most common source for today’s microscopes is an
incandescent tungsten-halogen bulb positioned in a
reflective housing that projects light through the
collector lens and into the substage condenser. Other
sources include arc-discharge lamps, light emitting diodes
(LEDs), and lasers.
Light emitting diodes (LEDs) (miniature semiconductor
devices) could conceivably replace the light bulb. This is
revolutionary, considering the light bulb might singlehandedly be responsible for modern society. Light emitting
diodes (LEDs) are a general source of continuous light with
high luminescence efficiency, and are based on the general
properties of a simple twin-element semiconductor diode
encased in a clear epoxy dome that acts as a lens.
In order to generate enough excitation light intensity to
furnish secondary fluorescence emission capable of
detection, powerful light sources are needed. These are
usually either mercury or xenon arc (burner) lamps, which
produce high-intensity illumination powerful enough to
image faintly visible fluorescence specimens. Mercury and
xenon arc lamps are now widely in fluorescence microscopy.
Nearly every source of light depends, at the fundamental
level, on the release of energy from atoms that have been
excited in some manner. Standard incandescent lamps,
derived directly from the early models of the 1800s, now
commonly utilize a tungsten filament in an inert gas
atmosphere, and produce light through the resistive effect
that occurs when the filament temperature increases as
electrical current is passed through (see Color
Temperature).
Fluorescence Microscopy
In the mid-19th century, British scientist Sir George G.
Stokes made the observation that the mineral fluorspar
exhibits fluorescence when illuminated with ultraviolet
light. Hence, fluorescence.
Fluorescence microscopy is an excellent method of studying
material that can be made to fluoresce, either in its
natural form (termed primary or auto fluorescence) or when
treated with chemicals capable of fluorescing (known as
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secondary fluorescence). The fluorescence microscope came
into being during the early 20th century through the work
of August Kohler, Carl Reichert, Heinrich Lehmann, and
others. Fluorescence microscopy is now used extensively in
cellular biology.
Epifluorescence is an optical set-up for a fluorescence
microscope in which the objective lens is used both to
focus ultraviolet light on the specimen and collect
fluorescent light from the specimen. Epifluorescence is
more efficient than transmitted fluorescence, in which a
separate lens or condenser is used to focus ultraviolet
light on the specimen. Epifluorescence also allows
fluorescence microscopy to be combined with another type on
the same microscope.
A fluorescence microscope uses a mercury or xenon lamp to
produce ultraviolet light. The light comes into the
microscope and hits a dichroic mirror, which is a mirror
that reflects one range of wavelengths and allows another
range to pass through. The dichroic mirror reflects the
ultraviolet light up to the specimen. The ultraviolet
light excites fluorescence within molecules in the
specimen. The objective lens collects the fluorescentwavelength light produced. This fluorescent light passes
through the dichroic mirror and a barrier filter (that
eliminates wavelengths other than fluorescent), making it
to the eyepiece to form the image.
Fluorescence-microscopy techniques are useful for seeing
structures and measuring physiological and biochemical
events in living cells. Various fluorescent indicators are
available to study many physiologically important chemicals
such as DNA, calcium, magnesium, sodium, pH and enzymes.
In addition, antibodies that are specific to various
biological molecules can be chemically bound to fluorescent
molecules and used to stain specific structures within
cells.
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Electron Microscopes
Under an electron microscope, the infinitesimal begins to
look like sweeping geographical landscapes. Blood clots
look like UFO’s caught in an extraterrestrial traffic jam.
Micro-minerals give the appearance of vast landscapes
dotted with buttes and canyons. Synthetic kidney stone
crystals look like falling snowflakes. The shells of
microscopic plants stand out like Christmas tree ornaments.
Nylon looks like a plate of spaghetti. Bugs look like
monsters.
The world of a grain of sand was once as far as the human
eye could go. Now, using electron microscopes, a grain of
sand is like the universe, filled with untold galaxies,
planetary systems and maybe even a few black holes. At the
organic level, humans are learning how to Mother Nature
builds life, one atom at a time.
Conventional microscopes use particles of light, or
photons, to look directly at small objects, employing glass
lenses to magnify things several thousand times. The SEM
opens the door to an even tinier level by using electrons,
which are much smaller than photons.
The process is the same for all electron microscopes, where
a stream of electrons is formed (by the Electron Source)
and accelerated toward the specimen using a positive
electrical potential. This stream is confined and focused
using metal apertures and magnetic lenses into a thin,
focused, monochromatic beam. This beam is focused onto the
sample using a magnetic lens. Interactions occur inside
the irradiated sample, affecting the electron beam. These
interactions and effects are detected and transformed into
an image.
Electron microscopes provide morphological, compositional
and crystallographic information at the atomic level
(nanometers). Topography is the surface features of an
object or “how it looks.” Texture is the direct relation
between these features and materials properties (hardness,
reflectivity). Morphology is the shape, size and
relationship of the particles making up the object
(ductility, strength, reactivity).
Composition explains the relative amounts of elements and
compounds that the object is composed of (melting point,
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reactivity, hardness). Crystallographic Information
determines how the atoms are arranged in the object and
their relationships with other properties (conductivity,
electrical properties, strength).
To create the images, a filament inside an electron “gun”
shoots a stream of electrons through a stack of
electromagnetic lenses, which focus the electrons into a
beam. The beam is directed to a fine point on the
specimen, and scans across it rapidly. The sample responds
by emitting electrons that are picked up by a detector
inside the sample chamber, beginning an electronic process
that results in an image that can be displayed on a TV
screen.
The Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), developed by
Max Knoll and Ernst Ruska in Germany in 1931, was the first
type of Electron Microscope and is patterned exactly on the
Light Transmission Microscope except that a focused beam of
electrons is used instead of light to “see through” the
specimen.
The first Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) appeared in
1942 with the first commercial instruments around 1965. A
TEM works much like a slide projector. A projector shines
a beam of light through (transmits) the slide, as the light
passes through it is affected by the structures and objects
on the slide. These effects result in only certain parts
of the light beam being transmitted through certain parts
of the slide. This transmitted beam is then projected onto
the viewing screen, forming an enlarged image of the slide.
Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEM) are patterned after
Reflecting Light Microscopes and yield similar information
as TEMs. Unlike the TEM, where electrons are detected by
beam transmission, the SEM produces images by detecting
secondary electrons which are emitted from the surface due
to excitation by the primary electron beam. In the SEM,
the electron beam is rastered across the sample, with
detectors building up an image by mapping the detected
signals with beam position.
Scientists have used the SEM to identify micro-plankton in
ocean sediments, fossilized remains found in underwater
canyons, the structure of earthquake-induced microfractures in rocks and micro-minerals, the microstructure
of wires, dental implants, cells damaged from infectious
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diseases, and even the teeth of microscopic prehistoric
creatures.
There are other types of electron microscopes. A Scanning
Transmission Electron Microscope (STEM) is a specific sort
of TEM, where the electrons still pass through the
specimen, but, as in SEM, the sample is scanned in a raster
fashion. A Reflection Electron Microscope (REM), like the
TEM, uses a technique involving electron beams incident on
a surface, but instead of using the transmission (TEM) or
secondary electrons (SEM), the reflected beam is detected.
Near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) is a type of
microscopy where a sub-wavelength light source is used as a
scanning probe. The probe is scanned over a surface at a
height above the surface of a few nanometers.
A Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) can be considered a
type of electron microscope, but it is a type of Scanning
probe microscopy and it is non-optical. The STM employs
principles of quantum mechanics to determine the height of
a surface. An atomically sharp probe (the tip) is moved
over the surface of the material under study, and a voltage
is applied between probe and the surface.
Depending on the voltage electrons will tunnel or jump from
the tip to the surface (or vice-versa depending on the
polarity), resulting in a weak electric current. The size
of this current is exponentially dependent on the distance
between probe and the surface. The STM was invented by
scientists at IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory. The STM
could image some types of individual atoms on electrically
conducting surfaces. For this, the inventors won a Nobel
Prize.
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Medical Imaging
Nuclear Medicine
Radiation therapy for cancer and PET scans fall in the
realm of nuclear medicine. Nuclear medicine uses
radioactive substances to image the body and treat disease.
Nuclear medicine looks at both the physiology (functioning)
and the anatomy of the body in establishing diagnosis and
treatment.
The techniques combine the use of computers, detectors, and
radioactive substances. Techniques include Positron
Emission Tomography (PET), Single Photon Emission Computed
Tomography (SPECT), cardiovascular imaging, and bone
scanning. These techniques can detect tumors, aneurysms
(weak spots in blood vessel walls), bad blood flow to
various tissues, blood cell disorders, dysfunctional
organs, and other diseases and ailments.
Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
PET produces images of the body by detecting the radiation
emitted from radioactive substances. These substances are
injected into the body, and are usually tagged with a
radioactive atom, such as Carbon-11, Fluorine-18, Oxygen15, or Nitrogen-13, that has a short decay time.
These radioactive atoms are formed by bombarding normal
chemicals with neutrons to create short-lived radioactive
isotopes. PET detects the gamma rays given off at the site
where a positron emitted from the radioactive substance
collides with an electron in the tissue.
In a PET scan, the patient is injected with a radioactive
substance and placed on a flat table that moves in
increments through a donut-shaped housing, similar to a CAT
scan. This housing contains the circular gamma ray
detector array, which has a series of scintillation
crystals, each connected to a photomultiplier tube. The
crystals convert the gamma rays, emitted from the patient,
to photons of light, and the photomultiplier tubes convert
and amplify the photons to electrical signals. These
electrical signals are then processed by the computer to
generate images.
Again, like CAT scans, the table moves and the process is
repeated, resulting in a series of thin slice images of the
body. The images are assembled into a 3-D model. PET
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provides images of blood flow or other biochemical
functions, depending upon the type of molecule that is
radioactively tagged. PET scans can show images of glucose
metabolism in the brain or rapid changes in activity in
various areas of the body. There are few PET centers
because they must be located near a particle accelerator
device that produces the short-lived radioisotopes used in
the technique.
Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT)
SPECT is similar to PET, but the radioactive substances
used in SPECT (Xenon-133, Technetium-99, Iodine-123) have
longer decay times, and emit single instead of double gamma
rays. SPECT can provide information about blood flow and
the distribution of radioactive substances in the body.
The images are less sensitive and detailed than PET images.
However, SPECT is cheaper and do not have to be located
near a particle accelerator.
Cardiovascular Imaging
Cardiovascular imaging techniques use radioactive
substances to chart the flow of blood through the heart and
blood vessels. One example of a cardiovascular imaging
technique is a stress thallium test, in which the patient
is injected with a radioactive thallium compound, exercised
on a treadmill, and imaged with a gamma ray camera. After
a period of rest, the study is repeated without the
exercise. The images before and after exercising are
compared to reveal changes in blood flow and are useful in
detecting blocked arteries and other anomalies.
Bone Scanning
Bone scanning detects radiation from a radioactive
substance (technetium-pp methyldiphosphate) that when
injected into the body, collects in bone tissue. Bone
tissue is good at accumulating phosphorus compounds. The
substance accumulates in areas of high metabolic activity,
and so the image shows “bright spots” of high activity and
“dark spots” of low activity. Bone scanning is useful for
detecting tumors, which generally have high metabolic
activity.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
In 1977, the first MRI exam ever
took place. It took almost five
image, and the image quality was
performed the exam is now in the
performed on a human being
hours to produce one
poor. The machine that
Smithsonian Museum. By
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the early 80s, there were a handful of MRI scanners.
in the new millennium, there are 1000s, with images
produced in seconds, not hours.
Now,
The basic design used in most is a giant cube. The cube in
a typical system might be 7 feet tall by 7 feet wide by 10
feet long. Newer models are getting smaller. There is a
horizontal tube running through the magnet from front to
back. This tube is known as the bore of the magnet. The
patient slides into the bore on a special table. Once the
body or body part to be scanned is in the exact center or
isocenter of the magnetic field, the scan begins.
In conjunction with radio wave pulses of energy, the MRI
scanner can pick out a very small point inside the
patient’s body and determine tissue type. The MRI system
goes through the patient’s body point by point, building up
a 2-D or 3-D map of tissue types. It then integrates all
of this information together to create 2-D images or 3-D
models.
MRI provides an unparalleled view inside the human body.
The level of detail is extraordinary compared with any
other imaging technique. MRI is the method of choice for
the diagnosis of many types of injuries and conditions
because of the incredible ability to tailor the exam to the
particular medical question being asked. MRI systems can
also image flowing blood in any part of the body.
The MRI machine applies an RF (radio frequency) pulse that
is specific only to hydrogen. The system directs the pulse
toward the area of the body being examined. The pulse
causes the protons in that area to absorb the energy
required, making them spin in a different direction. This
is the “resonance” part of MRI.
The RF pulse forces the protons to spin at a particular
frequency, in a particular direction. When the RF pulse is
turned off, the hydrogen protons begin to slowly
(relatively speaking) return to their natural alignment
within the magnetic field and release their excess stored
energy. When they do this, they give off a signal that the
coil now picks up and sends to the computer system. What
the system receives is mathematical data that is converted
into a picture that can be put on film. This is the
“imaging” part of MRI.
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Most imaging techniques use injectable contrast, or dyes,
for certain procedures. So does MRI. These agents work by
blocking the X-ray photons from passing through the area
where they are located and reaching the X-ray film. This
results in differing levels of density on the X-ray film.
The dyes have no physiologic impact on the tissue in the
body.
MRI contrast works by altering the local magnetic field in
the tissue being examined. Normal and abnormal tissue will
respond differently to this slight alteration, giving
differing signals. These varied signals are converted into
images, allowing the visualization of many different types
of tissue abnormalities and disease processes.
Before MRI and other imaging techniques, the only way to
see inside the body was to cut it open. MRI is used for a
variety of diagnoses, such as multiple sclerosis, tumors,
infections in the brain, spine or joints, seeing torn
ligaments, tendonitis, cysts, herniated discs, strokes, and
much more. MRI systems do not use ionizing radiation or
contrast materials that produce side effects.
MRIs can image in any plane. They have a very low
incidence of side effects. Another major advantage of MRI
is its ability to image in any plane or cross-section. The
patient doesn’t have to move as is required in x-ray
analysis. The magnets used in the MRI system control
exactly where in the body images are to be taken.
Some people are too big to fit into an MRI scanner.
Pacemakers prevent MRI analysis as well. MRI machines make
a lot of noise and can be claustrophobic. Patients don’t
have to move, but they do have to lie very still for long
periods of time. The slightest movement can cause
distorted images. Artificial joints and other metallic
devices in the body can cause distorted images. The
machines are very expensive and so are the exams.
Very small scanners for imaging specific body parts are
being developed. Another development is functional brain
mapping--scanning a person’s brain while performing a
physical task. New research will image the ventilation
dynamics of the lungs and produce new ways to image
strokes.
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Computerized Axial Tomography (CAT Scans)
Computerized axial tomography (CAT) scan machines produce
X-rays. X-ray photons are basically the same thing as
visible light photons, but have much more energy. This
higher energy level allows X-ray beams to pass straight
through most of the soft material in the human body.
A conventional X-ray image is basically a shadow where
light is shined on one side of the body and film on the
other side captures the silhouette of bones. Shadows
provide an incomplete picture of an object’s shape. If a
larger bone is directly between the X-ray machine and a
smaller bone, the larger bone may cover the smaller bone on
the film. In order to see the smaller bone, the body has
to turn.
In a CAT scan machine, the X-ray beam moves all around the
patient, scanning from hundreds of different angles. The
computer takes all this information and puts together a 3-D
image of the body. A CAT machine looks like a giant donut
tipped on its side. The patient lies down on a platform,
which slowly moves through the hole in the machine.
The X-ray tube is mounted on a movable ring around the
edges of the hole. The ring supports an array of X-ray
detectors directly opposite the X-ray tube. A motor turns
the ring so that the X-ray tube and the X-ray detectors
revolve around the body. Another kind of design is where
the tube remains stationary and the X-ray beam is bounced
off a revolving reflector.
Each full revolution scans a narrow, horizontal “slice” of
the body. The control system moves the platform farther
into the hole so the tube and detectors can scan the next
slice. The machine records X-ray slices across the body in
a spiral motion. The computer varies the intensity of the
X-rays in order to scan each type of tissue with the
optimum power.
After the patient passes through the machine, the computer
combines all the information from each scan to form a
detailed image of the body. Usually only part of the body
is scanned. Doctors usually operate CAT scan machines from
a separate room so they aren’t repeatedly exposed to
radiation. Since they examine the body slice by slice,
from all angles, CAT scans are much more comprehensive than
conventional X-rays. CAT scans are used to diagnose and
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treat a wide variety of ailments, including head trauma,
cancer and osteoporosis.
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Eye Glasses
Contact Lenses
Contact lenses are thin transparent plastic discs that sit
on the cornea. Just like eyeglasses, they correct
refractive errors such as myopia (nearsightedness) and
hyperopia (farsightedness). With these conditions, the eye
doesn’t focus light directly on the retina as it should,
leading to blurry vision. Contact lenses are shaped based
on the vision problem to help the eye focus light directly
on the retina.
Contact lenses
They move with
Normal glasses
Contact lenses
time.
are closer to natural sight than eyeglasses.
the eye/
can get in the way of the line of sight.
don’t. They can be worn several days at a
Contact lenses stay in place by sticking to the layer of
tear fluid that floats on the surface of the eye and by
eyelid pressure. The eyes provide natural lubrication and
help flush away any impurities that may become stuck to the
lens.
Originally, all contact lenses were made of a hard plastic
called polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). This is the same
plastic used to make Plexiglas. But hard lenses don’t
absorb water, which is needed to help oxygen pass through
the lens and into the cornea. Because the eye needs oxygen
to stay healthy, hard lenses can cause irritation and
discomfort. However, they are easy to clean.
Soft contact lenses are more pliable and easier to wear
because they’re made of a soft, gel-like plastic. Soft
lenses are hydrophilic, or “water loving,” and absorb
water. This allows oxygen to flow to the eye and makes the
lens flexible and more comfortable. More oxygen to the eye
means soft contact lenses can be worn for long periods with
less irritation.
Daily-wear lenses are the type of contacts removed every
night before going to bed (or whenever someone decides to
sleep). Extended-wear lenses are worn for several days
without removal. Disposable lenses are just what the name
implies: they are worn for a certain period of time and
then thrown away. Cosmetic lenses change the color of a
person’s eyes. Ultraviolet (UV) protection lenses act as
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sunglasses, protecting the eyes against harmful ultraviolet
rays from the sun.
Corneal reshaping lenses are worn to reshape the cornea and
correct vision. Rigid, gas-permeable lenses have both hard
and soft contact lens features. They are more durable than
soft lenses but still allow oxygen to pass through to the
eye. They don’t contain water, so are less likely to
develop bacteria and cause infection than soft lenses.
They are also hard enough to provide clear vision.
Contact lenses are frequently customized for athletes,
computer operators and other applications. Many contacts
don’t just correct vision problems but improve it.
Sunglasses
Sunglasses provide protection from harmful ultraviolet rays
in sunlight. Some sunglasses filter out UV light
completely. They also provide protection from intense
light or glare, like the light reflected off snow or water
on a bright day. Glare can be blinding, with distracting
bright spots hiding otherwise visible objects. Good
sunglasses can completely eliminate glare using
polarization.
Sunglasses have become a cultural phenomenon. In the
fashion world, designer sunglasses make people look “cool,”
or mysterious. They can also be ominous, such as the
mirrored sunglasses worn by roughneck bikers and burly
state troopers.
Cheap sunglasses are risky because although they are tinted
and block some of the light, they don’t necessarily block
out UV light. Cheap sunglasses are made out of ordinary
plastic with a thin tinted coating on them.
There are several types of lens material, such as CR-39, a
plastic made from hard resin, or polycarbonate, a synthetic
plastic that has great strength and is very lightweight.
These kinds of lens are usually lighter, more durable, and
scratch-resistant. Optical-quality polycarbonate and glass
lenses are generally free from distortions, such as
blemishes or waves. The color is evenly distributed. Some
sunglasses are very dark and can block up to 97 percent of
light.
More expensive sunglasses use special technologies to
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achieve increased clarity, better protection, and higher
contrast or to block certain types of light. Normal frames
similar to prescription eyeglasses filter light but
sometimes offer little protection from ambient light,
direct light and glare. Wrap-around frames, larger lenses
and special attachments can compensate for these
weaknesses. Most cheap sunglasses use simple plastic or
wire frames, while more expensive brands use high-strength,
light-weight composite or metal frames.
The brightness or intensity of light is measured in lumens.
Indoors, most artificial light is around 400 to 600 lumens.
Outside on a sunny day, the brightness ranges from about
1,000 lumens in the shade to more than 6,000 lumens from
bright light reflected off of hard surfaces, like concrete
or highways.
Comfort levels are around 3,500 lumens. Brightness above
this level produces glare. Squinting is the natural way to
filter such light. In the 10,000 lumens range, prolonged
exposure to light of such intensity can cause temporary or
even permanent blindness. A large snowfield, for instance,
can produce more than 12,000 lumens, resulting in what is
commonly called, “snowblind.”
Three kinds of light are associated with sunglasses:
direct, reflected, and ambient. Direct light is light that
goes straight from the light source (like the sun) to the
eyes. Too much direct light can wash out details and even
cause pain. Reflected light (glare) is light that has
bounced off a reflective object to enter the eyes. Strong
reflected light can be equally as damaging as direct light,
such as light reflected from snow, water, glass, white sand
and metal.
Ambient light is light that has bounced and scattered in
many directions so that it is does not seem to have a
specific source, such as the glow in the sky around a major
city. Good sunglasses can compensate for all three forms
of light.
Sunglasses use a variety of technologies to eliminate
problems with light: tinting, polarization, photochromic
lenses, mirroring, scratch-resistant coating, antireflective coating, and UV coating.
The color of the tint determines the parts of the light
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spectrum that are absorbed by the lenses. Gray tints are
great all-purpose tints that reduce the overall amount of
brightness with the least amount of color distortion. Gray
lenses offer good protection against glare. Yellow or gold
tints reduce the amount of blue light while allowing a
larger percentage of other frequencies through.
Blue light tends to bounce and scatter off a lot of things;
it can create a kind of glare known as blue haze. The
yellow tint eliminates the blue part of the spectrum and
has the effect of making everything bright and sharp. Snow
glasses are usually yellow. Tinting distorts color
perception are tinted glasses are not very useful with
there is a need to accurately see color. Other colors
include amber, green, purple and rose, all of which filter
out certain colors of the light spectrum.
Light waves from the sun or even from an artificial light
source such as a light bulb, vibrate and radiate outward in
all directions. Whether the light is transmitted,
reflected, scattered or refracted, when its vibrations are
aligned into one or more planes of direction, the light is
said to be polarized.
Polarization can occur naturally or artificially. On a
lake, for instance, natural polarization is the reflected
glare off the surface is the light that does not make it
through the “filter” of the water. This explains why part
of a lake looks shiny and another part looks rough (like
waves). It’s also why nothing can be seen below the
surface, even when the water is very clear.
Polarized filters are most commonly made of a chemical film
applied to a transparent plastic or glass surface. The
chemical compound used will typically be composed of
molecules that naturally align in parallel relation to one
another. When applied uniformly to the lens, the molecules
create a microscopic filter that absorbs any light matching
their alignment. When light strikes a surface, the
reflected waves are polarized to match the angle of that
surface. So, a highly reflective horizontal surface, such
as a lake, will produce a lot of horizontally polarized
light. Polarized lenses in sunglasses are fixed at an
angle that only allows vertically polarized light to enter.
Sunglasses or prescription eyeglasses that darken when
exposed to the sun are called photochromic, or sometimes
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photochromatic. Because photochromic lenses react to UV
light and not to visible light, there are circumstances
under which the darkening will not occur.
A good example is in the car. As the windshield blocks out
most of the UV light, photochromic lenses will not darken
inside the car. Consequently, many photochromic sunglasses
are tinted. Photochromic lenses have millions of molecules
of substances, such as silver chloride or silver halide,
embedded in them. The molecules are transparent to visible
light in the absence of UV light, which is the normal
makeup of artificial lighting. But when exposed to UV rays
in sunlight, the molecules undergo a chemical process that
causes them to change shape.
The new molecular structure absorbs portions of the visible
light, causing the lenses to darken. Indoors, out of the
UV light, a reverse chemical reaction takes place. The
sudden absence of UV radiation causes the molecules to
“snap back” to their original shape, resulting in the loss
of their light absorbing properties.
With some prescription glasses, different parts of the lens
can vary in thickness. The thicker parts can appear darker
than the thinner areas. By immersing plastic lenses in a
chemical bath, the photochromic molecules are actually
absorbed to a depth of about 150 microns into the plastic.
This depth of absorption is much better than a simple
coating, which is only about 5 microns thick and not enough
to make glass lenses sufficiently dark.
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Surveillance
Surveillance is an extremely popular subject in movies,
starting with the James Bond series. The Bond movies have
introduced the public to a slew of gadgets used by spies,
everything from the pen camera to computer simulations of
advanced weapons systems.
Video surveillance is particularly controversial, and the
subject has even been labeled “Big Brother.” It seems
video cameras are mounted everywhere, in banks, casinos,
grocery stores, shopping malls, train stations, airplanes
and airports and even on street corners.
The private detective is a popular character in movies,
using a variety of surveillance devices to spy on cheating
spouses, shady deals, and murder plots.
Video surveillance began with simple closed circuit
television monitoring. As early as 1965, there were press
reports in the United States suggesting police use of
surveillance cameras in public places. By the 70s, closed
circuit television (CCTV) systems were watched by officers
at all times.
Video cassette recorders revolutionized the surveillance
industry. Analog technology using taped video cassette
recordings meant surveillance could be preserved on tape as
evidence.
Video surveillance systems are used to monitor traffic flow
as well as a means of capturing traffic offenders. Through
the 80s and 90s, more businesses began installing systems,
from corporate offices to mini-marts. TV shows like Cops
and FBI’s Most Wanted continuously replay crimes and
criminals captured on tape, or digitally.
The Rodney King beating became controversial largely
because it was captured on film, even though it was not a
true act of surveillance.
The insurance industry found video surveillance very useful
in worker’s compensation fraud, bogus accident claims and a
variety of other insurance fraud cases. Fraudulent types
claiming disability think twice now that video cameras can
capture them living life as usual, such as the loss of
using one’s legs, meanwhile captured on film dancing at a
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party.
Video provides more compelling evidence in marital affair
and abuse cases than still photos. Videos can show a
sequence of events clearly tied together, whereas still
photos are more subject to interpretation. For instance,
in an abuse case, a still photo might capture an enraged
father with his arm stretched out and fist clenched. But
without evidence of victim and the victim being struck by
the abuser, it’s left to a jury to decide credibility.
There still remains the problem of owners and employees of
various businesses forgetting to replace tapes on a daily
basis, or reusing tapes and erasing what might have proved
to be damaging evidence in a criminal trial. Some poor
quality systems also produce poor quality film, where it’s
hard to tell just exactly what is going on.
The Charged Coupled Device camera (CCD), which uses
microchip computer technology, is one way to solve the
problem. Surveillance is possible in low light and at
night.
Digital Multiplexing units enable enabling recording on
several cameras at once (more than a dozen at time in some
cases. Digital multiplex also adds features like timelapse and motion-only recording, which saves a great deal
of wasted videotape.
Credit card theft is so rampant, video cameras are now
installed at nearly every ATM across the United States and
in most parts of the world.
Because of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, surveillance has
become a national priority. The downside is the issues of
the use of illegal wiretaps and other surveillance tactics
and the invasion of privacy. CCTV or video taped
surveillance systems are now used to cover major sporting
and other events that could be potential targets for
terrorist attacks.
Digital video surveillance is fast replacing analog. Much
longer periods of time can be recorded on a single hard
drive, with image resolution much clearer. Digital images
can also be manipulated easier, like adding light,
enhancing the image, or zooming in on details.
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Video (analog and digital) surveillance cameras are
increasingly being installed in public buildings, housing
projects, and parks and street corners to curb crime,
particularly drug selling and prostitution.
Political
rallies, parades and other festivals are also targets for
surveillance coverage.
Surveillance became personal with recent stories about
abusive or negligent nannies, baby sitters and
housekeepers. Digital cameras and webcams are now so small
they can be hidden anywhere.
Software developers have refined programs that enhance
video surveillance, like facial recognition programs that
compare various key facial feature points to mug shots or
photographs of terrorists or criminals. Face recognition
software installed on video surveillance camera systems are
increasingly being installed in such places as the Statue
of Liberty and throughout all the casino/resorts in Vegas.
The Sydney International Airport in Australia is one of the
first airports to install SmartGate, an automated border
crossing system used for all airline crew members. Using
photo biometrics, the video surveillance systems scans the
crew member’s face and compares it to the passport photo,
confirming a match in less than ten seconds.
Schools are increasingly installing face recognition video
surveillance for tracking missing children and registered
sex offenders, but not without controversial right to
privacy detractors.
The internet has enabled video surveillance to be installed
virtually anywhere and be watched from anywhere in the
world. Satellites enable images to be viewed on laptops.
The eye in the sky is a reality with digital streaming
video.
Morality aside, technology used in current surveillance
systems is the same technology used in webcams used by
amateur pornographers. Webcams are set up to watch an
individual engaged in every activity from brushing teeth to
having sex.
Because of the Internet and digital technology, cameras can
stream video 24/7 and be monitored via remote.
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The speed of new photo-capture devices is taking
surveillance to a new level. With a Smartphone, pictures
can be taken and then sent to the police, all within
seconds. Nearly everyone has a cell phone, and cell phones
are fast morphing into all-in-one-devices. Law enforcement
agencies are especially interested in integrated devices
where still and motion imagery can immediately be matched
against face recognition software.
Another downside of digital surveillance capability is that
whatever technology is available to law enforcement
agencies is also available to criminals and terrorists.
How these devices are used depends on the ingeniousness of
criminals, and many criminals are increasingly becoming
quite tech-savvy.
The FBI falls under closer scrutiny than other law
enforcement agencies, largely because of their
aggressiveness and willingness to break into homes,
offices, hotel rooms and vehicles. Computer files get
copied. Hidden cameras are installed. Microphones record
conversations meant to only take place in the bedroom.
Agents are known to have pried into safe deposit boxes,
watched from afar with video cameras and binoculars and
intercepted e-mails. The question is: who exactly is
under surveillance?
Paparazzi don’t behave much differently, except they are
after sensationalism and not crime.
Sometimes the FBI is backed by the courts, sometimes it
isn’t. The secretive nature of the FBI--and the CIA--is
certainly the subject of numerous spy and crime novels and
movies. One of the most popular authors in the 21st
century is John Grisham, who claims in a Forward in one of
his books that he knows nothing about the spy business.
Continued public outcry against improper or illegal
invasion of privacy is not helping the FBI much in pursuing
suspected criminals and terrorists. Stories abound of
average citizens being spied on for no apparent reason.
Myth or fact, the stories do well to generate suspicion and
fear.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, enacted in 1978
and revised after 7/11 by the Patriot Act, has given
investigators a potent arsenal against “agents of a foreign
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power.” The now current President Bush (as of 2006) is
under attack for allowing such investigations to go too
far.
The right to privacy of communications from electronic
surveillance (such as bugging and wiretapping) is protected
by several federal and state statutes and by the Fourth
Amendment to the Constitution. But like all other matters
of law, surveillance cases are subject to interpretation.
With technology becoming more advanced and accessible, what
constitutes surveillance is questionable.
There is no end to the use of surveillance. Nations spy on
other nations. Governments spy on their citizenry. Law
enforcement agencies spy on criminals. Criminals spy on
their victims. Paparazzi spy on celebrities. Private
detectives spy on cheating spouses. Corporations and
businesses spy on employees. Schools spy on children while
administrators spy on teachers. Parents spy on their
children and the next door neighbor.
The use of surveillance--possible because of optics
technology-based devices--is as much of a past time now as
a baseball game on Saturday. We spy on each other not
necessarily because we are looking for any wrong-doing, but
just because we like to watch each other.
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Telescopes
Without telescopes, the stars in the sky we see every night
would just be twinkling little lights. Hard to imagine
what people in pre-telescope times thought these twinkling
lights were. For some it must’ve been frightening. For
others, it was awe-inspiring.
It began with optics; the lens. Spectacles were being worn
in Italy as early as 1300. In the one-thing-leads-toanother theory, no doubt the ability to see better led to
the desire to see farther. Three hundred years later, a
Dutch spectacle maker named Hans Lippershey, put two lens
together and achieved magnification. But he also
discovered quite a number of other experimenters made the
same discovery when he tried to sell the idea.
Also in the 1600s, Galileo, an instrument maker in Venice,
started working on a device that many thought had little
use other than creating optical illusions (although they
weren’t called that at the time). In 1610 he published a
description of his night sky observations in a small paper
called, Starry Messenger (Sidereus Nuncius).
He reported that the moon was not smooth, as many had
believed. It was rough and covered with craters. He also
proposed the “Milky Way” was composed of millions of stars
and Jupiter had four moons. He also overturned the
geocentric view of the world system--the universe revolves
around the Earth--with the heliocentric view--the solar
system revolves around the Sun, a notion proposed around 50
years earlier by Copernicus. The device he invented to
make these discoveries came to be known as the telescope.
The telescope was a long thin tube where light passes in a
straight line from the aperture (the front objective lens)
to the eyepiece at the opposite end of the tube. Galileo’s
earlier device was the forerunner of what are now called
refractive telescopes, because the objective lens bends, or
refracts, light.
NASA now controls four observatories, a series of space
telescopes designed to give the most complete picture of
objects across many different wavelengths. Each
observatory studies a particular wavelength region in
detail.
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The telescopes in order of launch are: the Hubble Space
Telescope (1990), Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (1991),
Chandra X-ray Observatory (1999), and the Spitzer Space
Telescope (2003).
Sometimes several of the observatories are used to look at
the same object. Astronomers can analyze an object
thoroughly by studying it in many different kinds of light.
An object will look different in X-ray, visible, and
infrared light.
Recent experiments with color explored the way a prism
refracts white light into a array of colors. A circular
prism separating colors of visible light is known as
chromatic aberration, but the process limits the
effectiveness of existing telescopes. A new telescope
design using a parabolic mirror to collect light and
concentrate the image before it was presented to the
eyepiece. This resulted in the Reflective Telescope.
Reflective Telescopes
Reflective Telescopes are constructed with giant mirrors-or lenses--and collect more light than can be seen by the
human eye in order to see objects that are too faint and
far away.
Solar Telescopes, designed to see the Sun, have the
opposite problem: the target emits too much light.
Because of the sun’s brightness, astronomers must filter
out much of the light to study it. Solar telescopes are
ordinary reflecting telescopes with some important changes.
Because the Sun is so bright, solar telescopes don’t need
huge mirrors that capture as much light as possible. The
mirrors only have to be large enough to provide good
resolution. Instead of light-gathering power, solar
telescopes are built to have high magnification.
Magnification depends on focal length. The longer the
focal length, the higher the magnification, so solar
telescopes are usually built to be quite long.
Since the telescopes are so long, the air in the tube
becomes a problem. As the temperature of the air changes,
the air moves. This causes the telescope to create blurry
images. Originally, scientists tried to keep the air
inside the telescope at a steady temperature by painting
solar telescopes white to reduce heating. White surfaces
reflect more light and absorb less heat. Today the air is
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simply pumped out of the solar telescopes’ tubes, creating
a vacuum.
Because it’s so necessary to control the air inside the
telescope and the important instruments are large and
bulky, solar telescopes are designed not to move. They
stay in one place, while a moveable mirror located at the
end of the telescope, called a tracking mirror, follows the
Sun and reflects its light into the tube. To minimize the
effects of heating, these mirrors are mounted high above
the ground.
Astronomers have studied the Sun for a long time. Galileo,
among others, had examined sunspots. Other early
astronomers investigated the outer area of the Sun, called
the corona, which was only visible during solar eclipses.
Before the telescope, other instruments were used to study
the Sun. The spectroscope, a device invented in 1815 by
the German optician Joseph von Fraunhofer, spread sunlight
into colors and helps astronomers figure out what elements
stars contain. Scientists used a spectrum of the Sun to
discover the element helium, named after the Greek word for
Sun, “helio.”
In the 1890s, when the American astronomer George Ellery
Hale combined the technology of spectroscopy and
photography and came up with a new and better way to study
the Sun. Hale called his device the “spectroheliograph.”
The spectroheliograph allowed astronomers to choose a
certain type of light to analyze. For example, they could
take a picture of the Sun using only the kind of light
produced by calcium atoms. Some types of light make it
easier to see details such as sunspots and solar
prominences.
In 1930, the French astronomer Bernard Lyot came up with
another device that helped scientists study both the Sun
and objects nearby. The coronagraph uses a disk to block
much of the light from the Sun, revealing features that
would otherwise be erased by the bright glare. Close
observations of the Sun’s corona, certain comets, and other
details and objects are made possible by the coronagraph.
Coronagraphs also allow scientists to study features like
solar flares and the Sun’s magnetic field.
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Today, more technologically advanced versions of the
spectroheliograph and coronagraph are used to study the
Sun. The McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope on Kitt Peak in
Arizona is the world’s largest solar telescope. The Solar
and Heliospheric Observatory project is a solar telescope
in space that studies the Sun’s interior and corona, and
solar wind, in ultraviolet and X-rays as well as visible
light. Astronomers also use a technique called
helioseismology, a kind of spectroscopy that studies sound
waves in the Sun, to examine the Sun down to its core.
Basic telescope terms:
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Concave - lens or mirror that causes light to spread
out.
Convex - lens or mirror that causes light to come
together to a focal point.
Field of view - area of the sky that can be seen
through the telescope with a given eyepiece.
Focal length - distance required by a lens or mirror
to bring the light to a focus.
Focal point or focus - point at which light from a
lens or mirror comes together.
Magnification (power) - telescope’s focal length
divided by the eyepiece’s focal length.
Resolution - how close two objects can be and yet
still be detected as separate objects, usually
measured in arc-seconds (this is important for
revealing fine details of an object, and is related to
the telescope’s aperture).
Telescopes come in all shapes and sizes, from a little
plastic tube bought at a toy store for $2, to the Hubble
Space Telescope weighing several tons. Amateur telescopes
fit somewhere in between. Even though they are not nearly
as powerful as the Hubble, they can do some incredible
things. For example, a small 6-inch (15 centimeter) scope
can read the writing on a dime from 150 feet (55 meters)
away.
Most telescopes come in two forms: the refractor and
reflector telescope. The refractor telescope uses glass
lenses. The reflector telescope uses mirrors instead of
the lenses. They both try to accomplish the same thing but
in different ways.
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Telescopes are metaphorically giant eyes. The reason our
eyes can’t see the printing on a dime 150 feet away is
because they are simply too small. The eyes, obviously,
have limits. A bigger eye would collect more light from an
object and create a brighter image.
The objective lens (in refractors) or primary mirror (in
reflectors) collects light from a distant object and brings
that light, or image, to a point or focus. An eyepiece
lens takes the bright light from the focus of the objective
lens or primary mirror and “spreads it out” (magnifies it)
to take up a large portion of the retina. This is the same
principle that a magnifying glass (lens) uses. A
magnifying glass takes a small image on a sheet of paper,
for instance, and spreads it out over the retina of the eye
so that it looks big.
When the objective lens or primary mirror is combined with
the eyepiece, it makes a telescope. The basic idea is to
collect light to form a bright image inside the telescope,
then magnifying that image. Therefore, the simplest
telescope design is a big lens that gathers the light and
directs it to a focal point with a small lens used to bring
the image to a person’s eye.
A telescope’s ability to collect light is directly related
to the diameter of the lens or mirror (the aperture) used
to gather light. Generally, the larger the aperture, the
more light the telescope collects and brings to focus, and
the brighter the final image. The telescope’s
magnification, its ability to enlarge an image, depends on
the combination of lenses used. The eyepiece performs the
magnification. Magnification can be achieved by almost any
telescope using different eyepieces.
Refractors
Hans Lippershey, living in Holland, is credited with
inventing the refractor in 1608. It was first used by the
military. Galileo was the first to use it in astronomy.
Both Lippershey’s and Galileo’s designs used a combination
of convex and concave lenses. Around 1611, Kepler improved
the design to have two convex lenses, which made the image
upside-down. Kepler’s design is still the major design of
refractors today, with a few later improvements in the
lenses and in the glass used to make the lenses.
Refractors have a long tube, made of metal, plastic, or
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wood, a glass combination lens at the front end (objective
lens), and a second glass combination lens (eyepiece). The
tube holds the lenses in place at the correct distance from
one another. The tube also helps to keeps out dust,
moisture and light that would interfere with forming a good
image. The objective lens gathers the light, and bends or
refracts it to a focus near the back of the tube. The
eyepiece brings the image to the eye, and magnifies the
image. Eyepieces have much shorter focal lengths than
objective lenses.
Achromatic refractors use lenses that are not extensively
corrected to prevent chromatic aberration, which is a
rainbow halo that sometimes appears around images seen
through a refractor. Instead, they usually have “coated”
lenses to reduce this problem. Apochromatic refractors use
either multiple-lens designs or lenses made of other types
of glass (such as fluorite) to prevent chromatic
aberration. Apochromatic refractors are much more
expensive than achromatic refractors.
Refractors have good resolution, high enough to see details
in planets and binary stars. However, it is difficult to
make large objective lenses (greater than 4 inches or 10
centimeters) for refractors. Refractors are relatively
expensive. Because the aperture is limited, a refractor is
less useful for observing faint, deep-sky objects, like
galaxies and nebulae, than other types of telescopes.
Isaac Newton developed the reflector telescope around 1680,
in response to the chromatic aberration (rainbow halo)
problem that plagued refractors during his time. Instead
of using a lens to gather light, Newton used a curved,
metal mirror (primary mirror) to collect the light and
reflect it to a focus. Mirrors do not have the chromatic
aberration problems that lenses do. Newton placed the
primary mirror in the back of the tube.
Because the mirror reflected light back into the tube, he
had to use a small, flat mirror (secondary mirror) in the
focal path of the primary mirror to deflect the image out
through the side of the tube, to the eyepiece; the reason
being his head would get in the way of incoming light.
Because the secondary mirror is so small, it does not block
the image gathered by the primary mirror.
The Newtonian reflector remains one of the most popular
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telescope designs in use today.
Rich-field (or wide-field) reflectors are a type of
Newtonian reflector with short focal ratios and low
magnification. The focal ratio, or f/number, is the focal
length divided by the aperture, and relates to the
brightness of the image. They offer wider fields of view
than longer focal ratio telescopes, and provide bright,
panoramic views of comets and deep-sky objects like
nebulae, galaxies and star clusters.
Dobsonian telescopes are a type of Newtonian reflector with
a simple tube and alt-azimuth mounting. They are
relatively inexpensive because they are made of plastic,
fiberglass or plywood. Dobsonians can have large apertures
(6 to 17 inches, 15 to 43 centimeters). Because of their
large apertures and low price, Dobsonians are well-suited
to observing deep-sky objects.
Reflector telescopes have problems. Spherical aberration
is when light reflected from the mirror’s edge gets focused
to a slightly different point than light reflected from the
center. Astigmatism is when the mirror is not ground
symmetrically about its center.
Consequently, images of stars focus to crosses rather than
to points. Coma is when stars near the edge of the field
look elongated, like comets, while those in the center are
sharp points of light. All reflector telescopes experience
some loss of light. The secondary mirror obstructs some of
the light coming into the telescope and the reflective
coating for a mirror returns up to 90 percent of incoming
light.
Compound or catadioptric telescopes are hybrid telescopes
that have a mix of refractor and reflector elements in the
design. The first compound telescope was made by German
astronomer Bernhard Schmidt in 1930. The Schmidt telescope
had a primary mirror at the back of the telescope, and a
glass corrector plate in the front of the telescope to
remove spherical aberration. The telescope was used
primarily for photography, because it had no secondary
mirror or eyepieces. Photographic film is placed at the
prime focus of the primary mirror. Today, the SchmidtCassegrain design, which was invented in the 1960s, is the
most popular type of telescope. It uses a secondary mirror
that bounces light through a hole in the primary mirror to
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an eyepiece.
The second type of compound telescope was invented by
Russian astronomer, D. Maksutov, although a Dutch
astronomer, A. Bouwers, came up with a similar design in
1941, before Maksutov. The Maksutov telescope is similar
to the Schmidt design, but uses a more spherical corrector
lens. The Maksutov-Cassegrain design is similar to the
Schmidt Cassegrain design.
Telescope Mounts
Telescope Mounts are another important feature of
telescopes. The alt-azimuth is a type of telescope mount,
similar to a camera tripod, that uses a vertical (altitude)
and a horizontal (azimuth) axis to locate an object. An
equatorial mount uses two axes (right ascension, or polar,
and declination) aligned with the poles to track the motion
of an object across the sky.
The telescope mount keep the telescope steady, points the
telescope at whatever object is being viewed, and adjusts
the telescope for the movement of the stars caused by the
Earth’s rotation. Hands need to be free to focus, change
eyepieces, and other activities.
The alt-azimuth mount has two axes of rotation, a
horizontal axis and a vertical axis. To point the
telescope at an object, the mount is rotated along the
horizon (azimuth axis) to the object’s horizontal position.
Then, it tilts the telescope, along the altitude axis, to
the object’s vertical position. This type of mount is
simple to use, and is most common in inexpensive
telescopes.
There are two variations of the alt-azimuth mount.
The
ball and socket is used in inexpensive rich-field
telescopes. It has a ball shaped end that can rotate
freely in the socket mount. The rocker box is a low
center-of-gravity box mount, usually made of plywood, with
a horizontal circular base (azimuth axis) and Teflon
bearings for the altitude axis. This mount is usually used
on Dobsonian telescopes. It provides good support for a
heavy telescope, as well as smooth, frictionless motion.
Although the alt-azimuth mount is simple and easy to use,
it does not properly track the motion of the stars. In
trying to follow the motion of a star, the mount produces a
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“zigzag” motion, instead of a smooth arc across the sky.
This makes this type of mount useless for taking
photographs of the stars.
The equatorial mount also has two perpendicular axes of
rotation: right ascension and declination. However,
instead of being oriented up and down, it is tilted at the
same angle as the Earth’s axis of rotation. The equatorial
mount also comes in two variations. The German equatorial
mount is shaped like a “T.” The long axis of the “T” is
aligned with the Earth’s pole. The Fork mount is a twopronged fork that sits on a wedge that is aligned with the
Earth’s pole. The base of the fork is one axis of rotation
and the prongs are the other.
When properly aligned with the Earth’s poles, equatorial
mounts can allow the telescope to follow the smooth, arclike motion of a star across the sky. They can also be
equipped with “setting circles,” which allow easy location
of a star by its celestial coordinates (right ascension,
declination). Motorized drives allow a computer (laptop,
desktop or PDA) to continuously drive the telescope to
track a star. Equatorial mounts are used for
astrophotography.
Eyepiece
An eyepiece is the second lens in a refractor, or the only
lens in a reflector. Eyepieces come in many optical
designs, and consist of one or more lenses in combination,
functioning almost like mini-telescopes. The purposes of
the eyepiece are to produce and allow changing the
telescope’s magnification, produce a sharp image, provide
comfortable eye relief (the distance between the eye and
the eyepiece when the image is in focus), and determine the
telescope’s field of view.
Field of view is “apparent,” or, how much of the sky, in
degrees, is seen edge-to-edge through the eyepiece alone
(specified on the eyepiece). “True or real” is how much of
the sky can be seen when that eyepiece is placed in the
telescope (true field = apparent field/magnification).
There are many types of eyepiece designs: Huygens,
Ramsden, Orthoscopic, Kellner and RKE, Erfle, Plossl,
Nagler, and Barlow (used in combination with another
eyepiece to increase magnification 2 to 3 times). All
eyepieces have problems and are designed to fit specific
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telescopes.
Eyepieces with illuminated reticules are used exclusively
for astrophotography. They aid in guiding the telescope to
track an object during a film exposure, which can take
anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour.
Other Components
Finders are devices used to help aim the telescope at its
target, similar to the sights on a rifle. Finders come in
three basic types. Peep sights are notches or circles that
allow alignment with the target. Reflex sights use a
mirror box that shows the sky and illuminates the target
with a red LED diode spot, similar to a laser sight on a
gun. A telescope sight is a small, low magnification (5x
to 10x) telescope mounted on the side with a cross hair
reticule, like a telescopic sight on a rifle.
Filters are pieces of glass or plastic placed in the barrel
of an eyepiece to restrict the wavelengths of light that
come through in the image. Filters are used to enhance the
viewing of faint sky objects in light-polluted skies,
enhance the contrast of fine features and details on the
moon and planets, and safely view the sun. The filter
screws into the barrel of the eyepiece.
Another add-on component is a dew shield, which prevents
moisture condensation. For taking photographs,
conventional lens and film cameras or CCD devices/digital
cameras are used. Some astronomers use telescopes to make
scientific measurements with photometers (devices to
measure the intensity of light) or spectroscopes (devices
to measure the wavelengths and intensities of light from an
object).
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Optics in Review
It’s ironic that optics is not a more common subject or
theme in Hollywood movies, considering that movies are in
many ways the result of optics. There are a few
exceptions. AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Minority
Report feature virtual reality. Numerous military-based
movies draw attention to laser fighting jets and rifles
with sophisticated scopes.
Close up shots and sound effects bring out the drama of
these high tech devices. Of course, Star Wars made the
laser popular for kids. The sound of camera shutters is
another dramatic device used to heighten action in a story,
especially where surveillance is involved in the plot, or a
serial killer uses a camera to take photos of his victims.
Cameras are featured in many films, but usually as props
for characters like journalists and cops when a crime scene
is being photographed. Many characters wear glasses and
sunglasses, which can play a pivotal role in
characterization.
The prison guard in Cool Hand Luke wore mirrored
sunglasses, dramatically emphasizing his cold demeanor when
it came time to shooting a prisoner. Sylvester Stallone
wore them in Cobra because, well, it made him look cool.
In other movies, the audience follows the camera straight
into an eye of a character. With the help of special
effects, we journey straight into the brain and can see
what a character sees inside their mind. Still, there
aren’t a lot of movies about microscopes and telescopes.
Electron microscopy is a highly specialized field with
applications and techniques dazzling in their
sophistication. Science is kept out of the public eye,
probably because no one understands it, except a select
few.
Most people barely know what an electron is yet alone such
things as apoptosis, intracellular signaling, pathology,
anaphase A and anaphase B during mitosis, quantification
and characterization of DNA in chloroplasts and
mitochondria, characterization of nuclear structure and
nuclear pore complexes, cytoskeletal organization in
parasites, DNA repair, materials analysis of additives in
weaponized microorganisms, genomics
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A ton of new fields have sprung up in the last decade or
so, either as a result of electron microscopy or the need
for it. For instance, specialized branches in forensic
analysis, chemical and biological weapon detection,
lithography, nanomaterials and nanodevices, structure and
chemistry of nanoparticles, nanotubes, nanobelt and
nanowires, polymers, clean environments, crystallography,
hydrocarbon catalysis, production and storage of energy,
climate control and surface modifications for sensors,
pollution and auto exhaust emission control,
photocatalysis, biocatalysis, surface engineering, advanced
fuel cells, alternative energy sources, and quantitative xray microanalysis of terrestrial and extraterrestrial
materials.
As widespread as science is in our world, from medicine to
auto design, from energy to building construction, it’s a
secretive world requiring a big dictionary. Science
invades everyday life, in fact, it created it. But we turn
the lights off in our houses, hop in our cars and turn on
our MP3 players without any awareness of how such
processes, techniques and devices came into being.
Einstein is just some gray-haired bearded genius who knew a
lot of math.
Now we live in a world of language that includes nanoelectronics, nano-photonics, micromechanical devices (MEMS)
and Bio-MEMs, Cryo-Preparation, Cryo-Sectioning, and CryoApproaches Using TEM, SEM, Cryo-examination of frozen
hydrated biological samples, Focused ion beam instruments,
scanning transmission electron microscopy, electron energy
loss spectroscopy, x-ray mapping, Low voltage microscopy,
Scanning cathodoluminescence microscopy, and other terms
and concepts that require an advanced degree just to learn
how to pronounce them.
It must be difficult for those who do understand advanced
science, not being able to sit down and chat with others as
easily as “regular folk” discuss the latest football scores
or Washington political scandals, so prevalent in the news.
From chemistry to biology, geology to math, science has
never really been comfortable in the cultural mainstream.
It’s ironic, since much of what we call culture, like
movies, TV and music, is driven by advanced science. We
take pictures with digital cameras without any concern for
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optics. We listen to CDs without any knowledge of
lithography.
Electron microscopy is complex enough, but it’s even more
complex with sub-divided into High-Resolution Electron
Microscopy (HREM), Analytical Electron Microscopy (AEM),
Electron Energy-Loss Spectroscopy (EELS), Convergent Beam
Electron Diffraction (CBED), Scanning Electron Microscopy
(SEM), Low-voltage SEM, Variable Pressure SEM (VPSEM/ESEM),
Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD), X-ray
Spectrometry, Quantitative X-ray Microanalysis, Spectral
Imaging, X-ray Imaging, Diffraction and Spectroscopy,
Crystallography, Scanned Probe Microscopy (SPM), Confocal
Microscopy, Multi Photon Excitation Microscopy, Optical
Fluorescence Microscopy, Infrared and Raman Microscopy and
Microanalysis, Molecular Spectroscopy and Cryogenic
Techniques and Methods.
In the future, ordinary silicon chips will move data using
light rather than electrons, unleashing nearly limitless
bandwidth and revolutionizing the world of computers. And
to think, we’ve hardly tuned into the digital revolution
that already took place.
Within the next decade, the circuitry found in today’s
servers will be able to process billions of bits of data
per second, fitting neatly on a silicon chip half the size
of a postage stamp. Copper connections currently used in
computers and servers will prove inadequate to handle such
vast amounts of data.
At data rates approaching 10 billion bits per second,
microscopic imperfections in the copper or irregularities
in a printed-circuit board begin to weaken and distort the
signals. One way to solve the problem is to replace copper
with optical fiber and the electrons with photons.
Integrated onto a silicon chip, an optical transceiver
could send and receive data at 10 billion or even 100
billion bits per second. Movies will download in seconds
rather than hours. Multiple simultaneous streams of video
will open up new applications in remote monitoring and
surveillance, teleconferencing, and entertainment.
Organic semiconductors are strong candidates for creating
flexible, full-color displays and circuits on plastic.
Using organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs), organic fullcolor displays are set to replace liquid-crystal displays
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(LCDs) for use with laptop and desktop computers. Such
displays can be deposited on flexible plastic foils,
eliminating the fragile and heavy glass substrates used in
LCDs, and can emit bright light without the pronounced
directionality inherent in LCD viewing.
Organic electronics have already entered the commercial
world. Multicolor automobile stereo displays are now
available. Future plans include OLED backlights to be used
in LCDs and organic integrated circuits, film-thin solar
cells, and portable, lightweight roll-up OLED displays
(projected on a wall) designed to replace conventional TVs.
Organic circuitry is expected to exceed or replace silicon
electronics. Organic semiconductors attracted industrial
interest when it was recognized that many of them are
photoconductive under visible light. This discovery led to
their use in electrophotography (or xerography) and as
light valves in LCDs.
The day will most likely come when every home has a
particle accelerator, an electron microscope and miniature
Hubble space probe as common as TVs, refrigerators and
light bulbs. But then, they’ll just be the “new” devices.
Refrigerator doors are opened without any understanding of
food processing. Few people know where TV images come
from, beyond knowing they are either sexy or violent. And
light is simply the flick of a switch...or the clap of
hands.
Maybe it’s the way things should be, so we can get on with
the business of living and leave the how and why to others.
But in doing so, we inadvertently create power shifts. If
knowledge is power, then specialized scientific knowledge
is near God-like.
However, business people are shrewd and politicians are
manipulative in ways they can control society, if not the
world, without knowing what E=Mc2 means. Car dealers sell
millions of cars without the slightest clue about pollution
analysis or surface-to-road ratios, or how combustion
works. And consumers don’t care much either, as look as
the car can pass an emissions test and has a CD player,
that’s good enough.
We put on our glasses and hope we don’t lose them. We take
pictures of our children not because of a new kind of lens
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or photographic technique, but because we want to treasure
a memory. We watch movies looking for thrills, without
much regard for how they blew up that airplane, or where
that sea of robot soldiers came from, or what supercomputer
graphics workstation was used to create either image. We
also trust our doctors, so when they order a PET scan, as
frightening as it might be, we readily comply.
But somebody is out there working for an eyeglass company.
Somebody is sitting behind a microscope all day much in the
same way normal folks sit in front of the “boob tube” all
day. Hopefully, the microscopist is more productive. And,
there is such a thing as educational, informative and
enriching TV watching.
So the future of human evolution is largely dependent not
so much on knowledge and technology, but on the choices we
make to engage ourselves in evolution/revolution. We can
watch or we can participate. We can sit back passively or
become interactive. It is the choices we make that will
ultimately determine the constructive or destructive forces
of advanced science. And with science moving to the atomic
and sub-atomic level, perhaps average folk better pay a
little closer attention to what’s going on in the universe.
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Photography
Photography: A Brief History
The name “Photography” is credited to Sir John Herschel,
who first used the term in 1839, the year the photographic
process became public. The word is derived from the Greek
words for light and writing.
There are two distinct scientific processes that combine to
make photography possible. These processes were known
before photography was invented.
The first of these processes was optical. The Camera
Obscura (dark room) had been in existence for at least four
hundred years (before Herschel). There is a drawing, dated
1519, of a Camera Obscura by Leonardo da Vinci. The second
process was chemical. For hundreds of years before
photography was invented, people had been aware, for
example, that some colors are bleached in the sun, but they
had made little distinction between heat, air and light.
In the 1600s, Robert Boyle reported that silver chloride
turned dark under exposure, but he appeared to believe that
it was caused by exposure to the air, rather than to light.
Angelo Sala, in the early 17th century, noticed that
powdered nitrate of silver is blackened by the sun. In
1727 Johann Heinrich Schulze discovered that certain
liquids change color when exposed to light.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Thomas Wedgwood
successfully captured images, but his silhouettes could not
survive, as there was no known method of making the image
permanent. The first successful picture was produced in
1827 by Niépce, using material that hardened on exposure to
light. This picture required an exposure of eight hours.
In 1829 Niépce formed a partnership with Louis Daguerre.
Niépce died four years later. Daguerre continued to
experiment and discovered a way of developing photographic
plates, a process which greatly reduced the exposure time
from eight hours to half an hour. He also discovered that
an image could be made permanent by immersing it in salt.
Details of the process were made public in 1839, and
Daguerre named it the Daguerreotype.
Some people at the time thought the Daguerreotype was
blasphemous. Some artists saw it as a threat to their
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livelihood, and some even prophesied that painting would
cease to exist.
The Daguerreotype process was expensive and pictures could
not be replicated. The only way of making two pictures of
the same thing was to use two cameras side by side.
The Calotype was invented by William Henry Fox Talbot and
solved the problem of duplication. The earliest paper
negative known was produced in August 1835. In 1844 he
introduced a photographically illustrated book, The Pencil
of nature. The advantage of Talbot’s method was that an
unlimited number of positive prints could be made. Today’s
photography is based on the same principle.
Talbot’s photography was on paper, and inevitably the
imperfections of the paper were printed alongside with the
image, when a positive was made. Glass was used as a basis
for negatives, but the silver solution wouldn’t stick to
the shiny surface of the glass. In 1848, Abel Niépce de
Saint-Victor (Niepce’s cousin), perfected a process of
coating a glass plate with white of egg sensitized with
potassium iodide, and washed with an acid solution of
silver nitrate. This new (albumen) process made for very
fine detail and much higher quality. However, it was very
slow, and only photographs of architecture and landscapes
were possible. Human faces didn’t work.
In 1851, Frederick Scott Archer introduced the Collodion
process. This process was much faster than conventional
methods, reducing exposure times to two or three seconds.
The process revolutionized photography. The collodion
process required that the coating, exposure and development
of the image should be done while the plate was still wet.
Another process developed by Archer was named the
Ambrotype, which was a direct positive.
The wet collodion process required a considerable amount of
equipment on location. Attempts were made to preserve
exposed plates in wet collodion, but the preservatives
lessened the sensitivity of the material. A dry method was
needed. Dr. Richard Maddox, in 1871, discovered a way of
using Gelatin (which had been discovered only a few years
before) instead of glass as a basis for the photographic
plate. This led to the development of the dry plate
process. Dry plates could be developed much more quickly.
Factory-made photographic material was now becoming
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possible. There was no longer a need for wet-plates or a
darkroom tent.
Celluloid had been invented in the early 1860s by John
Carbutt. He persuaded a manufacturer to produce very thin
celluloid as a backing for sensitive material. George
Eastman introduced flexible film in 1884. Four years later
he introduced the box camera, and photography was now
available to the masses. Other names of significance
include Herman Vogel, who developed a means where film
could become sensitive to green light, and Eadweard
Muybridge paved the way for motion picture photography.
Stereoscopic photography became popular during the
Victorian Age, which reproduced images in three dimensions.
Film
Despite the digital revolution, film is stilled used to
capture still and moving pictures because of its incredible
ability to record detail in a very stable form. Taking a
picture means when the shutter clicks, a moment in time is
frozen by recording the visible light reflected from the
objects in the camera’s field of view. The reflected light
causes a chemical change to the photographic film inside
the camera. The chemical record is very stable, and can be
subsequently developed, amplified and modified to produce a
representation (a print).
In a 35-mm cartridge of color print film there is a long
strip of plastic that has coatings on each side. The heart
of the film is called the base, and it starts as a
transparent plastic material (celluloid) that is extremely
thin. The back side of the film (usually shiny) has
various coatings that are important to the physical
handling of the film in manufacture and in processing.
The other side of the film is where photochemistry happens.
There may be 20 or more individual layers coated here that
are collectively less than one thousandth of an inch thick.
The majority of this thickness is taken up by a very
special binder made of gelatin that holds the imaging
components together.
Some of the layers coated on the transparent film do not
form images. They are there to filter light, or to control
the chemical reactions in the processing steps. The
imaging layers contain sub-micron sized grains of silverhalide crystals that act as the photon detectors. These
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crystals are the heart of photographic film. They undergo
a photochemical reaction when they are exposed to various
forms of electromagnetic radiation. In addition to visible
light, the silver-halide grains can be sensitized to
infrared radiation.
Silver-halide grains are manufactured by combining silvernitrate and halide salts (chloride, bromide and iodide) in
complex ways that result in a range of crystal sizes,
shapes and compositions. These primitive grains are then
chemically modified on their surface to increase their
light sensitivity. The unmodified grains are only
sensitive to the blue portion of the spectrum, and they are
not very useful in camera film.
Organic molecules known as spectral sensitizers are added
to the surface of the grains to make them more sensitive to
blue, green and red light. These molecules must adsorb
(attach) to the grain surface and transfer the energy from
a red, green, or blue photon to the silver-halide crystal
as a photo-electron. Other chemicals are added internally
to the grain during its growth process, or on the surface
of the grain. These chemicals affect the light sensitivity
of the grain, also known as its photographic speed (ISO or
ASA rating).
Negatives are the exposures made in the camera. Prints are
made from negatives. Products that have the word “chrome”
in the name produce a color transparency (slides) that
requires some form of projector for viewing. The slides
are the actual film that was exposed in the camera.
Film speed
Film comes with an ASA (American Standards Association) or
ISO (International Standards Organization) rating that
indicates speed. The ISO and ASA scales are identical.
Some of the most common film speeds:
 ISO 100 - good for outdoor photography in bright
sunlight
 ISO 200 - good for outdoor photography or brightly lit
indoor photography
 ISO 400 - good for indoor photography
 ISO 1000 or 1600 - good for indoor photography
avoiding the use of a flash.
Generally, the relative speed rating of the film is part
of its name. ISO and ASA speed ratings are printed on the
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box containing the roll of film. The higher the number,
the faster the film. “Faster” means increased light
sensitivity. Fast film is needed for photographing quickly
moving objects or dimly lit surroundings without the
benefit of additional illumination (such as a flash).
Increased light sensitivity comes from the use of larger
silver-halide grains. These larger grains can result in a
blotchy or “grainy” appearance to the picture, especially
in enlargements from a 35-mm negative. Professional
photographers use a larger-format negative to reduce the
degree of enlargement and the appearance of grain. The
trade-off between photographic speed and graininess is an
inherent part of conventional photography. Photographicfilm manufacturers are continuously searching for ways to
make faster films with less grain.
A slow-speed film is used for portrait photography, where
lighting of the subject can be controlled and the subject
is stationary.
A tungsten-balanced film is used indoors where the primary
source of light is from tungsten filament light bulbs.
Since the visible illumination coming from a light bulb is
different than from the sun (daylight), the spectral
sensitivity of the film must be modified to produce a good
image.
The first step after loading the film is to focus the image
on the surface of film. This is done by adjusting glass or
plastic lenses that bend the reflected light from the
objects onto the film. Older cameras required manual
adjustment, but today’s modern cameras use solid-state
detectors to automatically focus the image, or are fixedfocus (no adjustment possible).
The proper exposure must be set. The film speed is the
first factor, and most of today’s cameras automatically
sense which speed film is being used from the markings that
are on the outside of a 35-mm cartridge. Exposure to film
is the product of light intensity and exposure time. The
light intensity is determined by how much reflected light
is reaching the film plane. Light meters are used to
determine light sensitivity. Many cameras have built-in
exposure meters.
The larger the diameter of the camera lens, the more light
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comes in. If there is too much light reaching the film
plane for the exposure-time setting, the lens can be
“stepped down” (reduced in diameter) using the f-stop
adjustment. The f-stop adjustment works like the iris when
the eye reacts to bright sunlight.
Photographic film has limited exposure latitude. If it is
underexposed, it will not detect all the reflected light
from a scene. The resulting print appears to be muddy
black and lacks detail. If it is over-exposed, all of the
silver-halide grains are exposed so there is no
discrimination between lighter and darker portions of the
scene. The print appears to be washed out, with little
color intensity.
Faster film allows a smaller aperture setting for the same
exposure time. This smaller aperture diameter produces a
larger depth of field. Depth of field determines how much
of the subject matter in the print is in focus. A limited
depth of field keeps the primary object in focus and the
background is out of focus.
By opening the camera’s shutter for a fraction of a second,
a latent image of the visible energy reflected off the
objects is formed in the viewfinder. The brightest portion
of the picture exposes the majority of the silver-halide
grains in that particular part of the film. In other parts
of the image, less light energy reached the film, and fewer
grains were exposed.
The process involved in making the picture is a complex
photochemical event. For more information on this process,
see the websites listed under Photography in the References
section.
Developing Film
Developing film is also a complicated photochemical
process. However, film can be developed with just a basic
understanding of chemistry, like knowing which chemicals to
use. The film is placed in a developing agent that is
actually a reducing agent. The reducing agent will convert
all the silver ions into silver metal. Some grains will
develop more rapidly.
With the proper control of temperature, time and agitation,
grains with latent images will become pure silver. The
unexposed grains will remain as silver-halide crystals.
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Next, the film is rinsed with water, or by using a “stop”
bath that arrests the development process. The unexposed
silver-halide crystals are removed in a “fixing bath.” The
fixer dissolves only silver-halide crystals, leaving the
silver metal behind. Finally, the film is washed with
water to remove all the processing chemicals. The film
strip is dried, and the individual exposures are cut into
negatives.
It is a negative in the sense that it is darkest (has the
highest density of opaque silver atoms) in the area that
received the most light exposure. In places that received
no light, the negative has no silver atoms and is clear.
In order to make it a positive image that looks normal to
the human eye, it must be printed onto another lightsensitive material (usually photographic paper).
In this development process, gelatin played an important
role, in that it swelled to allow the processing chemicals
to get to the silver-halide grains, but kept the grains in
place. This swelling process is vital for the movement of
chemicals through the layers of a photographic film.
The process of developing color prints compared to black
and white is similar, but also different, and complex.
Also, there are a number of photographic processes that
took place through the development of photography. These
processes include: Albumen prints, ambrotype, autochrome
plates, calotype, carbon prints, Collodion prints,
cyanotype, daguerreotype, diluted albumen print, photogenic
drawing, photogravure, platinum prints, salt prints, silver
prints, tintypes, wet plate, and woodburytype. In
addition, a wide array of photographic paper is used to
make prints. Again, consult the websites listed in the
Reference section. Kodak has a learning center on their
website.
Digital Cameras/Digital Images: Pixels, Resolution,
Formats
A digital image is usually a rectangular grid comprised of
individual pixels (picture element or PEL). A good analogy
might be a tile mosaic, with the smallest element in the
mosaic being the individual tiles (each of which is one
color or shade). Each pixel in a digital image has a bitdepth value, which informs a computer which color (or shade
of gray) the pixel will display (the greater the bit-depth
value, the more colors/grays to choose from). The combined
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effect of all the individually colored pixels creates the
image.
The number of pixels in an image is often used as a way to
describe the image’s resolution. The word resolution has a
specific technical meaning to microscope users, namely the
ability to distinguish between two closely adjacent objects
at a given magnification. In the context of digital
images, the word resolution usually refers to how
frequently an object was sampled.
Image resolution is often confused with the resolution of
the output device (computer monitor or printer). Output
devices typically express their resolution in dots/inch
(DPI). Digital imaging software programs (Adobe Photoshop)
often set their scale factors based on the monitor
resolution (72 DPI). This setting is only useful for
images that will ultimately be displayed on a monitor.
Printers often refer to the maximum output resolution in
dots per inch (laser printers range from 300-1200 DPI,
inkjets 1440 DPI, dye-sublimation printers 300 DPI).
Bit-Depth
The bit-depth of an image can greatly affect the size of
the computer file.
Bit depth (Number of colors/shades; approximate file size)
21/2 - 0.125 MB
24/32 - 0.5 MB
28/256 - 1.0 MB
212/4096 - 1.5 MB
216/65,536 - 2.0 MB
224/16,777,216 - 3.0 MB
Bit-depth relates to the number of colors that can be
displayed in the image. Images with only two colors are
binary, the pixels are either black or white. Monitors and
imaging hardware generally range from 8-bit mode (256
shades of gray) to 24-bit mode (true color). Newer
monitors feature 32-bit (highest quality). These ranges
are greater than the sensitivity of the human eye.
The most commonly used color model is RGB (Red, Green,
Blue) for on-screen color. RGB is an additive color model.
The three different phosphors on the monitor screen are
excited at different intensities, usually an 8-bit range
for each color, with
256 intensities per color, for a
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total of 16.7 million possible color combinations.
Color printing typically uses a subtractive color model
called CYM (Cyan, Yellow, Magenta). Sometimes this will be
referred to as CYMK due to the addition of black to allow
for darker colors to be printed. The color inks combine on
the white paper and act like a filter to absorb some
wavelengths of light and reflect the remainder into the
eye. CYMK cannot reproduce as large a range of colors as
the RGB model.
File Formats
There are a large number of available file formats for
storing digital images. The majority of the file formats
are proprietary, and are specific to a given software
program or specific uses.
Well known file formats include:
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

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BMP - windows bitmap
EPS - encapsulated postscript, this format is more
useful for vector-based information than pixel-based
information
GIF - graphics exchange format, originally copyrighted
by CompuServe, used on web pages, has a 256 color
palette limitation, not suitable for most scientific
images
JPEG - joint photographic experts group, supports 24bit color, uses a lossy compression technique
(discrete cosine function), most often used on web
pages, not suitable for most scientific images.
PNG - portable network graphics, supports 48-bit color
and 16 grayscale, lossless compression
TIFF - tagged image file format, originally developed
by Aldus Corp. (which was purchased by Adobe Systems)
and Microsoft Corp. Supports palette images (up to 8
bit), 8 and (in some programs) 16 bit grayscale as
well as 24 bit color. TIFF is probably the most
commonly used file format for scientific images.
In addition to digital photos, conventional photos can be
turned into digital file formats using a digital scanner.
Digital scanners are now as common as printers.
At its most basic level, a digital camera has a series of
lenses that focus light to create an image of a scene.
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Instead of focusing this light onto a piece of film, it
focuses it onto a semiconductor device that records light
electronically. A computer then breaks this electronic
information down into digital data. Instead of film, a
digital camera has a sensor that converts light into
electrical charges. The image sensor employed by most
digital cameras is a charge coupled device (CCD). Some
cameras use complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS)
technology instead.
Both CCD and CMOS image sensors convert light into
electrons. Once the sensor converts the light into
electrons, it reads the value (accumulated charge) of each
cell in the image. A CCD transports the charge across the
chip and reads it at one corner of the array. An analogto-digital converter (ADC) then turns each pixel’s value
into a digital value by measuring the amount of charge at
each photosite and converting that measurement to binary
form.
CMOS devices use several transistors at each pixel to
amplify and move the charge using more traditional wires.
The CMOS signal is digital, so it doesn’t need an ADC. CCD
sensors create high-quality, low-noise images. CMOS
censors are generally more susceptible to noise. Because
each pixel on a CMOS sensor has several transistors located
next to it, the light sensitivity of a CMOS chip is lower.
Many of the photons hit the transistors instead of the
photodiode. CCDs consume as much as 100 times more power
than an equivalent CMOS sensor.
Typical resolutions include:
256x256 - Found on very cheap cameras, this resolution is
so low that the picture quality is almost always
unacceptable. This is 65,000 total pixels.
640x480 - This is the low end on most “real” cameras. This
resolution is ideal for e-mailing pictures or posting
pictures on a Web site.
1216x912 - This is a “megapixel” image size -- 1,109,000
total pixels -- good for printing pictures.
1600x1200 - With almost 2 million total pixels, this is
“high resolution.” You can print a 4x5 inch print taken at
this resolution with the same quality that you would get
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from a photo lab.
2240x1680 - Found on 4 megapixel cameras -- the current
standard -- this allows even larger printed photos, with
good quality for prints up to 16x20 inches.
4064x2704 - A top-of-the-line digital camera with 11.1
megapixels takes pictures at this resolution. At this
setting, 13.5x9 inch prints can be created with no loss of
picture quality.
High-end consumer cameras range from 12, 16 or 20 million
pixels. The quality of 35mm film is about 20 million
pixels.
A 2.1-megapixel camera can produce images with a resolution
of 1600x1200, or 1,920,000 pixels. But “2.1 megapixel”
means there should be at least 2,100,000 pixels. There is
a discrepancy between the numbers because the CCD has to
include circuitry for the ADC to measure the charge. This
circuitry is dyed black so that it doesn’t absorb light and
distort the image.
To get a full color image, most sensors use filtering to
look at the light in its three primary colors. Once the
camera records all three colors, it combines them to create
the full spectrum. High quality cameras use three separate
sensors, each with a different filter, to capture color. A
beam splitter directs light to the different sensors.
There are other methods and filters available.
Just as with film, a digital camera has to control the
amount of light that reaches the sensor. The two
components it uses to do this, the aperture and shutter
speed, are also present on conventional cameras. The
aperture is automatic in most digital cameras, but some
allow manual adjustment to give professionals and hobbyists
more control over the final image.
Unlike film, the light sensor in a digital camera can be
reset electronically, so digital cameras have a digital
shutter rather than a mechanical shutter. These two
aspects work together to capture the amount of light needed
to make a good image. In addition to controlling the
amount of light, the camera has to adjust the lenses to
control how the light is focused on the sensor. In
general, the lenses on digital cameras are very similar to
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conventional camera lenses. Some digital cameras use
conventional lenses while others use automatic focusing
techniques.
The focal length is one important difference between the
lens of a digital camera and the lens of a 35mm camera.
The focal length is the distance between the lens and the
surface of the sensor. Sensors from different
manufacturers vary widely in size, but in general they’re
smaller than a piece of 35mm film. In order to project the
image onto a smaller sensor, the focal length is shortened
by the same proportion.
Focal length also determines the magnification, or zoom.
In 35mm cameras, a 50mm lens gives a natural view of the
subject. Increasing the focal length increases the
magnification, and objects appear to get closer. The
reverse happens when decreasing the focal length. A zoom
lens is any lens that has an adjustable focal length, and
digital cameras can have optical zoom, digital zoom, or
both. Some cameras also have macro focusing capability,
meaning that the camera can take pictures from very close
to the subject.
Digital cameras have one of four types of lenses.
Fixed-focus, fixed-zoom lenses are the kinds of lenses
found on disposable and inexpensive film cameras. Opticalzoom lenses with automatic focus are similar to the lens on
a video camcorder, with “wide” and “telephoto” options and
automatic focus. These lenses change the focal length of
the lens rather than just magnifying the information that
hits the sensor.
With digital-zoom lenses, the camera takes pixels from the
center of the image sensor and interpolates them to make a
full-sized image. Depending on the resolution of the image
and the sensor, this approach may create a grainy or fuzzy
image. Replaceable lens systems are similar to the
replaceable lenses on a 35mm camera. Some digital cameras
can use 35mm camera lenses.
Most digital cameras have an LCD screen for immediate
viewing of photos. For storage, most cameras are capable
of connecting through serial, parallel, SCSI, USB or
FireWire connection and use some sort of removable storage
device, like SmartMedia cards, CompactFlash cards and
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Memory Sticks. Most cameras use the JPEG file format for
storing pictures.
Camcorders
Camcorders, or video camera recorders, have become almost
as popular as cameras. Nearly every event of every day
life is now captured on tape, from school plays, sports
events, and family reunions, to car accidents, bar room
fights, and...sex.
With digital camcorders, amateur movies can be loaded into
a computer--just like digital still photos--opened with a
video editing software program, edited, enhanced and even
scored with a soundtrack, just like in Hollywood. Well,
not quite just like Hollywood. However, many new
filmmakers start out using camcorders.
The camera section contains a CCD (charge coupled device),
lens and motors to handle the zoom, focus, and aperture.
The VCR section is similar to most VCRs only smaller. The
camera section takes an image and converts it into an
electronic signal. The VCR section records the electronic
signal on tape (or digitally).
The viewfinder is used by the user to see what is being
shot. Viewfinders are like mini TVs. Some camcorders use
full-color LCD screens. There are many formats for analog
camcorders, and many extra features.
Digital camcorders have all these same elements, but have
an added component that takes the analog information and
converts it into digital information. Digital information-like all computer data--can be replicated an unlimited
number of times without loss of quality.
Jerome Lemelson, an inventor, is credited with the first
camcorder patent in the early 80s.
In a film camera, the lenses serve to focus the light from
a scene onto film treated with chemicals that have a
controlled reaction to light. Camera film records the
scene in front of it. It picks up greater amounts of light
from brighter parts of the scene, and lower amounts of
light from darker parts of the scene. The lens in a
camcorder also serves to focus light, but instead of
focusing it onto film, it shines the light onto a small
semiconductor image sensor. This sensor, a charge-coupled
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device (CCD), measures light with a half-inch (about 1 cm)
panel of 300,000 to 500,000 tiny light-sensitive diodes
called photosites.
Each photosite measures the amount of light (photons) that
hits a particular point, and translates this information
into electrons (electrical charges). A brighter image is
represented by a higher electrical charge, and a darker
image is represented by a lower electrical charge. A CCD
creates a video picture by recording light intensity.
To create a video signal, a camcorder CCD must take many
pictures every second, which the camera then combines to
give the impression of movement. Most digital camcorders
use tapes (because they are less expensive), so they have a
VCR component much like an analog camcorder’s VCR. Instead
of recording analog magnetic patterns, however, the tape
head records binary code.
All camcorders come with an autofocus device, usually an
infrared beam that bounces off objects in the center of the
frame and comes back to a sensor on the camcorder.
Camcorders are also equipped with a zoom lens. Camcorders
adjust automatically for different levels of light.
Analog camcorders record video and audio signals as an
analog track on video tape. Analog formats include
Standard VHS (same type used in regular VCRs), VHS-C
(standard VHS tape housed in a more compact cassette),
Super VHS (much higher resolution but can’t be played in
standard VCRs), Super VHS-C (a more compact version), 8mm
(the size of an audio cassette), Hi-8 (much higher
resolution than 8mm).
Digital camcorders record information digitally.. Digital
video can also be downloaded to a computer, where it can be
edited or posted on the Internet. Digital video has a much
better resolution than analog video
MiniDV camcorders record on compact cassettes, which are
fairly expensive and hold about 60 to 90 minutes of
footage. The video has an impressive 500 lines of
resolution and can be easily transferred to a personal
computer. DV camcorders can be extremely lightweight and
compact--about the size of a paperback novel. Many digital
camcorders work as digital still cameras as well. Sony’s
MicroMV works the same basic way as MiniDV but records on
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much smaller tapes.
Digital8 camcorders (produced by Sony exclusively) are very
similar to regular DV camcorders, but use standard Hi-8mm
tapes, which are less expensive. These tapes hold up to 60
minutes of footage, which can be copied without any loss in
quality.
Digital8 cameras are generally a bit larger than DV
camcorders -- about the size of standard 8mm models.
As of 2006, DVD camcorders are up and coming. Instead of
recording magnetic signals on tape, DVD camcorders burn
video information directly onto small discs. The main
advantage is that each recording session is recorded as an
individual track, like the individual song tracks on a CD.
There is no need for rewinding or fast-forwarding through
tape. DVD camcorders are pretty close to MiniDV models in
performance. DVDs can store more footage. Depending on
the camcorder’s settings, a disc can hold 30 minutes to two
hours of digital video.
Newer DVD camcorders support two DVD formats: DVD-R and
DVD-RAM. Both are three-quarters the size of DVD movie
discs and are encased in plastic cartridges (at least while
in the camcorder). The advantage of DVD-R camcorder discs
is that they work in most set-top DVD players. DVD-R means
record once only. DVD-RAM discs allow unlimited recording
but can’t be played in ordinary DVD players, but can be
converted to a format that will work in standard players.
Some digital camcorders record directly onto memory cards,
such as Flash memory cards, Memory Sticks and SD cards.
Many different digital video editing software programs are
available.
What is most interesting about camcorders is the technology
that was once used by professionals is now available to
anyone. The same applies to recording technology.
Amateurs can set up home video/recording studios that can
produce amazing quality products. It’s not quite
Hollywood, but it’s a good training ground.
Movie Cameras
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) has had a profound impact on
modern life, and in particular, the entertainment industry.
Known as the “Wizard of Menlo Park” (New Jersey), he
patented 1,093 inventions, including the phonograph, the
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kinetograph (a motion picture camera), and the kinetoscope
(a motion picture viewer). He was also a prominent
manufacturer and businessman through the merchandising of
his inventions.
The concept of moving images as entertainment was not a new
one by the latter part of the 19th century. Magic lanterns
and other devices had been employed in popular
entertainment for generations. Magic lanterns used glass
slides with images which were projected. The use of levers
and other contrivances made these images “move”. Another
mechanism called a Phenakistiscope consisted of a disc with
images of successive phases of movement on it which could
be spun to simulate movement.
The Zoopraxiscope, developed by photographer Eadweard
Muybridge in 1879, projected a series of images in
successive phases of movement. These images were obtained
through the use of multiple cameras. Following this,
Edison invented a single camera capable of recording
successive images. The single camera was a breakthrough
that influenced all subsequent motion picture devices.
The initial experiments on the Kinetograph were based on
Edison’s conception of the phonograph cylinder. Tiny
photographic images were affixed in sequence to a cylinder,
with the idea that when the cylinder was rotated the
illusion of motion would be reproduced via reflected light.
A prototype for the Kinetoscope was publicly unveiled at a
convention of the National Federation of Women’s Clubs in
1891. The device was both a camera and a peep-hole viewer,
and the film used was 18mm wide. The film ran horizontally
between two spools, at continuous speed. A rapidly moving
shutter gave intermittent exposures when the apparatus was
used as a camera and intermittent glimpses of the positive
print when it was used as a viewer. A spectator looked
through the same aperture that housed the camera lens. The
Kinetoscope was refined in 1892 and subsequent years.
The most popular movie cameras in use today are Arriflex,
Moviecam (now owned by the Arri Group), and the Panavision
models. For very high speed filming, PhotoSonics are used.
The movie camera is a type of photographic camera which
takes a rapid sequence of photographs on film. Once
developed, the film can be projected as a motion picture.
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In contrast to a still camera which captures a single
snapshot at a time, the movie camera takes a series of
images; each called a “frame”.
The frames are later played back in a movie projector at a
specific speed, called the “frame rate” (number of frames
per second) to give the illusion of motion. The human eye
and brain merge the separate pictures together to generate
the illusion, a phenomenon called the “persistence of
vision”.
Most of the optical and mechanical elements of a movie
camera are present in the movie projector, such as film
tensioning, take-up, intermittent motion, loops, and rack
positioning are almost identical.
The camera does not have an illumination source and film
stock is housed in a light-tight enclosure. Lighting a set
is critical to what a camera captures on film. Movie
cameras come with a wide array of lenses and filters. A
movie camera has an exposure control via an iris aperture
located on the lens. There is a rotating, mirrored shutter
behind the lens, which alternately passes the light from
the lens to the film, or reflects it into the viewfinder.
Film cameras do not record sound. Some older news cameras
had magnetic recording heads inside the camera. For
magnetic recording, single perf 16mm film pre-striped with
a magnetic stripe along one edge was used. Sound (dialog
and action) is recorded separately. Sound F/X and music is
added in post-production.
Digital cameras are increasingly being used in Hollywood,
but for the most part, Hollywood still uses film. There is
also a continuous push to use digital projection systems in
movie theaters, but most theaters still use traditional
movie projectors.
16 mm cameras are used frequently in independent film
making, and later blown up to 35 mm in film labs. Other
formats exist (70 millimeter).
The Clapper
The clapper board, which contains basic information about a
scene, is seen at the beginning of each take (a shot
sequence). It is used as a reference point for the editor
to sync the picture to the sound (provided the scene and
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take are also called out so that the editor knows which
take goes with any given sound take). It’s called a
clapper because two pieces, joined by a hinge, are
“clapped” together, making a loud clap sound which
indicates the start of the take. Scene and take numbers
are written on the board, visible on film.
For syncing with sound, the most commonly used system uses
unique identifier numbers exposed on the edge of the film
by the film stock manufacturer (KeyKode is the name for
Kodak’s system). These are then logged (usually by a
computer editing system, but sometimes by hand) and
recorded along with audio timecode during editing.
These systems are used in replace of or conjunction with
clapboards. Aaton cameras have a system called AatonCode
that can “jam sync” with a timecode-based audio recorder
and prints a digital timecode directly on the edge of the
film itself.
Some cameras have low-accuracy (“non-sync” or MOS) filmadvance systems. One of the most common uses of these
cameras in commercial films are the spring-wound cameras
used in hazardous special effects, known as “crash cams”.
Scenes shot with these with these types of cameras have to
be kept short, or resynchronized manually with the sound.
Mounting the Camera during a Shoot
A number of different methods are used to employ movie
cameras on a film set (studio or location) including
tripods, dollies, cranes, boom-controlled and handheld.
Ariel photography and shooting dialog while a car is moving
use different mounting methods.
Steadicams are handheld cameras used to track actors as
they move around obstacles or across rough ground,
characters walking through forests or crowds, and many
other uses.
Commercial director Garrett Brown is credited with the
invention of the Steadicam in the early 1970s. Traditional
handheld cameras pick up the cameraman’s body movements and
vibrations. “Brown’s Stabilizer,” later renamed Steadicam,
stabilizes a camera by using an articulated, iso-elastic
arm, A specialized “sled” that holds the camera equipment,
and a supportive vest.
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The camera, along with a battery and a monitor, are
positioned on the sled. The sled is attached to the
articulated arm, which is attached to the vest. The arm
and vest configuration works to isolate the camera from the
body of the cameraman. The sled’s job is to provide optimum
balance for the camera.
Some Steadicam shots (sequences) are as smooth as dolly or
crane shots, particularly useful in following an actor down
stairs, through long, narrow hallways, and a multitude of
other locations where cranes and dollies are impossible to
use.
Typically, the Steadicam operator walks ahead of the
actors, shooting them from the front as they walk and talk.
Obviously the operator must walk backwards for this kind of
shot, supported by other crew members. Or the operator
will walk behind the actors.
Sometimes the jolts, shakes and vibrations picked up by
handhelds prove to be useful effects for certain kinds of
scenes, such as the perspective of a cop chasing a suspect
through a building or to heighten the drama of an
unsettling scene in a horror movie.
Dollies are the usual means for mounting cameras during
shooting. Dollies are wheeled platforms operated by
“grips” that move along tracks (like railroad tracks).
Some dollies have lifts for capturing certain overhead
shots, while huge cranes are needed for super long overhead
shots, like those used in the movie, Titanic. Regardless
of Steadicam, dolly, crane or boom, each shooting method
has its limitations and must be meticulously planned out.
Long Shots and Close-ups
The right camera angle can make all the difference in the
world in terms of generating fear or a laugh. The right
lens and the right lighting capture a melancholy mood or a
killer in the shadows.
Long shots give us a battle scene. Close ups give us the
fear on a soldier’s face. A medium shot engages us in a
conversation. As the camera pans away from the
conversation, the audience sees a monster lurking behind a
doorway, but the characters are unsuspecting. Ah, what
would the movies be without suspense? A super close-up and
we see the monster’s teeth, razor-sharp, drooling and
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bloody--enough to make us run out of the theater screaming.
Of course, the right sound effect and score needs to go
with it.
Webcams
Webcams are increasingly finding serious use such as in
space shuttle launches, multiple business uses, and traffic
control. The Internet features a host of personal cams and
private cams used in a variety of ways from broadcasting
church sermons to extremely profitable pornographic use.
Webcams are used for security, from professional
surveillance in a wide range of public buildings, airports
and public events, to home security. Webcams can be used
to monitor virtually anything via remote.
A simple Webcam setup consists of a digital camera attached
to a computer, typically through the USB port. Webcam
software “grabs a frame” from the digital camera at a
preset interval (for example, the software might grab a
still image from the camera once every 30 seconds) and
transfers it to another location for viewing. Webcams used
for streaming video use a higher frame rate. Frame rate
indicates the number of pictures the software can grab and
transfer in one second. For streaming video, a minimum
rate of at least 15 frames per second (fps) is needed; 30
fps is ideal.
Once it captures a frame, the software broadcasts the image
over an Internet connection (broadband is critical). There
are several broadcast methods. Using the most common
method, the software turns that image into a JPEG file and
uploads it to a Web server using File Transfer Protocol
(FTP). Some Webcam software comes with Web-based image
access, including remote access, which utilizes a UDP
protocol to transfer
Webcam images directly from one computer to another.
Anyone using a Web browser can access the Webcam images on
a PC. Most users who use webcams set up dedicated websites
for viewing.
Webcam features are many. Motion sensing takes a new
picture when it detects motion. Image archiving is just
what it implies, with images saved at predetermined
intervals. Some instant messenger programs support Webcam
video for Video Messaging. Advanced connections use wired
or wireless methods to connect home-theater A/V equipment
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to a Webcam.
Automation is the use of Robotic cameras to set a series of
pan/tilt positions and program frame-capture settings based
on the position of the camera. Streaming media is used for
professional applications. Custom coding is useful for
setting up a set of commands that instruct a webcam to do
things like automatic refresh. Viewers normally refresh an
image manually by clicking on the Refresh button in the
browser.
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TV
The Boob Tube
Some people have no telephones or refrigerators; but they
have a TV. Most statistics claim an estimated 99% of
American homes have at least one TV. But, this claim is no
longer sufficient in estimating the size and scope of the
TV market. Without authoritative background, it’s fair to
say most homes have more than one TV.
Some homes have a TV in every room, including the bathroom
and garage. Plus, there are portable TVs. As if that’s
not enough, people spend hours in bars watching TVs. Now,
TV shows are downloadable from the Internet and viewable on
screens that fit in the palm of a hand (the iPod).
One of the most popular past times of prisoners is watching
TV. Trials, wars and Presidential speeches are broadcast
on TV. Clearly, TV is a cultural and technological
phenomenon rivaling the light bulb, the telephone and the
car, perhaps even more so, considering that the automobile
and telephone/cell phone industries rely heavily on TV
advertising to generate sales.
No electronic device causes as much controversy as the TV,
not so much for its technology and money making ability,
but for its content. The severest critics scream, “Too
much sex and violence.” Hollywood--the mother of TV--gets
the same digs. V-Chips enable parents to take control over
what their children watch, endorsed by the omni-presence of
the FCC, the media and communications watchdog. But for
the most part, TV has charmed us with a host of stars and
shows that have defined American culture. That’s not
completely accurate. TV is a global phenomenon.
In America, reruns keep the Golden Age of the 50s alive
with shows like I Love Lucy, Leave It to Beaver, and Ozzie
and Harriet. The success of some shows is overwhelming and
can’t be measured. M.A.S.H. is on constantly, a show
that’s been on since the 70s. And then, there’s The 70s
Show. The stars of Friends allegedly commanded a million
bucks per episode. But that’s trade talk. Salary
information on TV stars is as mythical as the shows they
star in. However, some of TVs biggest stars, like Oprah
Winfrey, Bill Cosby and Merv Griffin (amongst many others),
are repeatedly reported as the wealthiest entertainers in
show biz.
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The galaxy of stars TV has given the public includes some
of the most popular entertainers in entertainment history.
Lucille Ball, Red Skeleton, Bob Hope, Johnny Carson...these
names are legends. Shows like Jackie Gleason, Bandstand,
Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In (where Goldie Hawn got her
start), Gilligan’s Island, I Dream of Genie, and dozens
more, have become cultural phenomena. The Kennedy
assassination was broadcast on TV. Ed Sullivan introduced
the Beatle’s to America. The Vietnam War was the first war
to be broadcast daily into the homes of Americans.
America--and the world--witnessed 9/11 on TV.
If anyone wants to sell something, TV is the place to do
it. The cost of 30-second spots during prime time and
specialized events like the Super Bowl or the Academy
Awards run into the millions. Major corporations like
McDonalds and Coca-Cola spend more on TV advertising than
any other corporate expenditure. And people love to hate
commercials.
When the remote came along, it was the first means viewers
had of avoiding commercials. But timing was critical.
Mindless flipping through channels or excessively long
kitchen, bathroom and telephone call breaks could mean
missing part of a program. And programmers are quite
savvy. They can time a program in such a way that if a
viewer is not watching the second a program returns, they
could miss a vital plot link.
Cable and satellite TV came along and promised an end to
nuisance advertising. However, regular broadcasting
networks still thrive and commercials remain a necessary
evil. Some commercials are very well put together and even
enjoyable to watch. They’ve become mini-programs, in a
sense, with humor, dialog, story lines and all the special
effects found in Hollywood. Like Hollywood’s Oscars, TV’s
Emmys, the TV commercial world has the Clio Award. A
number of well known actors, directors and other media
professionals got their start in commercials. Regardless,
the goal remains the same: sell something.
TV trivia rivals movie trivia. Who was the first female
broadcaster? When was the first color TV introduced? What
was the first commercial ever aired? What was the first
televised sports event? How old is Al Bundy?
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TV History
Through the early 20th century, up to the Golden Age of TV
(late 40s and 50s), to HDTV and Satellite TV today, the
history of television broadcasting is vast. The US began
experimental mechanical broadcasting in the mid-to-late
1920s, and experimental electronic (Cathode-ray-tube)
broadcasting in the late 30s, early 40s.
In the 1870s, the “selenium camera” was a device that would
allow people to “see by electricity.” Other similar
devices at the time were called telectroscopes. Eugen
Goldstein introduced “cathode rays” to describe the light
emitted when an electric current was forced through a
vacuum tube. Sheldon Bidwell experimented with
telephotography. In Germany, Paul Nipkow patented the
“electric telescope.”
Alexander Graham Bell, along with others of his time,
imagined “seeing” through a telephone. Bell called his
device, simply, the “photophone.” During the 1st
International Congress of Electricity held at the 1900
World’s Fair in Paris, “distance vision” was a popular
subject. Allegedly this is also where the word
“television” was first heard. In 1927, Bell Laboratories
and the Department of Commerce held the 1st long-distance
transmission of a live picture and voice simultaneously.
Then secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover was the “star” of
the show, announcing the technological breakthrough.
Ironically, it was another World Fair in 1939 where RCA’s
David Sarnoff generated new interest in RCA’s new line of
TV receivers that had to be connected to radios for sound.
Coaxial cable lines (pure copper or copper-coated wire
surrounded by insulation and an aluminum covering) used to
transmit television, telephone and data signals were first
laid by AT&T between New York and Philadelphia in 1936. In
1945 the 1st experimental microwave relay system was
introduced by Western Union between New York and
Philadelphia. This distribution system transmitted
communication signals via radio along a series of towers.
With lower costs than coaxial cable, microwave relay
stations carried most TV traffic by the 70s.
Between 1945 and 1948 the number of commercial (as opposed
to experimental) television stations grew from 9 to 48 and
the number of cities having commercial service went from 8
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to 23. Sales of television sets increased 500%. In 1946
Peter Goldmark, working for CBS, demonstrated his color
television system to the FCC. Also in the late 40s,
playwrights Arthur Miller, Paddy Chayevsky and others
introduced Americans to high drama in programs like Kraft
Television Theater, Studio One, and the Actors Studio.
John Cameron Swayze introduced America to weekday news
programming via the Camel Newsreel Theater in 1948. By
1960 there were 440 commercial VHF stations, 75 UHF
stations, and 85% of U.S. households had a television set.
The 1960s through the 1980s represented a period of
expansion that spawned a slew of new devices and
technology. In 1962, the world experienced the 1st
transatlantic reception of a television signal via the
TELSTAR satellite, launched by NASA. By 1967 most network
programming was in color and in 1972 half of U.S.
households had a color television.
In 1975, HBO, then a fledgling company, bought the rights
to the live transmission of The Thrilla from Manila, the
heavyweight championship fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe
Frazier. Subscribing cable viewers saw the historic fight
as it was happening. The ability of satellite
communications to broadcast real-time images from around
the world, revolutionized TV, and it revolutionized the way
humans viewed the world. In 1978 PBS was the 1st network
to deliver all its programming via satellite instead of
landlines.
Home videotaping was another major technology introduced
during this time. In 1972 the Phillips Corporation
introduced video cassette recording (VCR) for the home.
Sony’s Betamax format in 1976 morphed into RCA’s VHS
format. By 1985 the VHS format dominated the U.S. home
market.
Fiber optic cable was introduced in 1970 by Corning’s
Robert Maurer, Donald Keck, and Peter Schultz. Fiber optic
cable is transparent rods of glass or plastic stretched so
they are long and flexible and transmit information
digitally using rapid pulses of light. Fiber optic cable
could carry 65,000 times more information than conventional
copper wire.
High definition television (HDTV) was also introduced
during this period. In 1981 NHK, the Japanese National
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Broadcasting Company demonstrated their 1,125 line HDTV
system to the Society of Motion Picture and Television
Engineers at a conference in San Francisco. The sharpness
of a television picture is a function of the number of
lines per screen--the more lines the sharper and more vivid
the image. In the 1920s, pictures were broadcast between 30
and 60 lines.
Convergence
The convergence--or marriage-- of digital technologies,
broadband networks, movies, radio and television will spawn
a new device that does it all and fits in the pocket. Even
those who can’t see or hear will be fitted with artificial
intelligence, allowing them to see and hear better than
most people do normally. Shows will become so interactive
(some form of virtual reality) it will be impossible to
tell the difference between fantasy and reality. The
viewer will be the star.
In the new millennium, analog TVs still proliferate, but
this is changing fast. Digital TV (DTV) is setting new
standards. Satellite dishes now pepper backyards and
rooftops all over America.
TV shows are viewed on flat
screen computer monitors, downloaded straight to a large
screen, high definition home entertainment system, or
downloaded to portable devices like iPods.
Somewhere, there’s a guy in a cheap motel room, still
trying to adjust a coat hanger to get better reception on a
black and white TV. It’s late at night, and the best he
can hope for is an info-commercial selling some exercise
device designed to shape abdominal muscles into a
washboard. If he’s lucky, he might get a re-run of I Love
Lucy.
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Scientific Visualization
Scientific Visualization: An Overview
Visualization in its broadest terms represents any
technique for creating images to represent abstract data.
Scientific Visualization has grown to encompass many other
areas like business (information visualization), computing
(process visualization), medicine, chemical engineering,
flight simulation, and architecture. Actually there’s not
a single area of human endeavor that does not fall under
scientific visualization in one form or another.
From a crude perspective, scientific visualization was born
out of the conversion of text into graphics. For instance,
describing an apple with words. Bar graphs, charts and
diagrams were a 2-dimensional forerunner in converting data
into a visual representation. Obviously words and 2dimensional representations can only go so far, and the
need for more mathematically accurate datasets was needed
to describe an object’s exterior, interior, and functioning
processes.
Such datasets were huge, and it wasn’t until the
development of supercomputers with immense processing power
combined with sophisticated digital graphics workstations
that conversion from data into a more dynamic, 3-D
graphical representation was possible. From the early days
of computer graphics, users saw the potential of computer
visualization to investigate and explain physical phenomena
and processes, from repairing space vehicles to chaining
molecules together.
In general the term “scientific visualization” is used to
refer to any technique involving the transformation of data
into visual information. It characterizes the technology
of using computer graphics techniques to explore results
from numerical analysis and extract meaning from complex,
mostly multi-dimensional data sets.
Traditionally, the visualization process consists of
filtering raw data to select a desired resolution and
region of interest, mapping that result into a graphical
form, and producing an image, animation, or other visual
product. The result is evaluated, the visualization
parameters modified, and the process run again.
Three-dimensional imaging of medical datasets was
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introduced after clinical CT (Computed axial tomography)
scanning became a reality in the 1970s. The CT scan
processes images of the internals of an object by obtaining
a series of two-dimensional x-ray axial images.
The individual x-ray axial slice images are taken using a
x-ray tube that rotates around the object, taking many
scans as the object is gradually passed through a tube. The
multiple scans from each 360 degree sweep are then
processed to produce a single cross-section. See MRI and
CAT scanning in the Optics section.
The goal in the visualization process is to generate
visually understandable images from abstract data. Several
steps must be done during the generation process. These
steps are arranged in the so called Visualization Pipeline.
Visualization Methods
Data is obtained either by sampling or measuring, or by
executing a computational model. Filtering is a step which
pre-processes the raw data and extracts information which
is to be used in the mapping step. Filtering includes
operations like interpolating missing data, or reducing the
amount of data. It can also involve smoothing the data and
removing errors from the data set.
Mapping is the main core of the visualization process. It
uses the pre-processed filtered data to transform it into
2D or 3D geometric primitives with appropriate attributes
like color or opacity. The mapping process is very
important for the later visual representation of the data.
Rendering generates the image by using the geometric
primitives from the mapping process to generate the output
image. There are number of different filtering, mapping
and rendering methods used in the visualization process.
Some of the earliest medical visualizations, created 3D
representations from CT scans with help from electron
microscopy. Images were geometrical shapes like polygons
and lines creating a wire frame, representing threedimensional volumetric objects. Similar techniques are
used in creating animation for Hollywood films. With
sophisticated rendering capability, motion could be added
to the wired model illustrating such processes as blood
flow, or fluid dynamics in chemical and physical
engineering.
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The development of integrated software environments took
visualization to new levels. Some of the systems developed
during the 80s include IBM’s Data Explorer, Ohio State
University’s apE, Wavefront’s Advanced Visualizer, SGI’s
IRIS Explorer, Stardent’s AVS and Wavefront’s Data
Visualizer, Khoros (University of New Mexico), and PV-WAVE
(Precision Visuals’ Workstation Analysis and Visualization
Environment).
These visualization systems were designed to help
scientists, who often knew little about how graphics are
generated. The most usable systems used an interface.
Software modules were developed independently, with
standardized inputs and outputs, and were visually linked
together in a pipeline. These interface systems are
sometimes called modular visualization environments (MVEs).
MVEs allowed the user to create visualizations by selecting
program modules from a library and specifying the flow of
data between modules using an interactive graphical
networking or mapping environment. Maps or networks could
be saved for later recall.
General classes of modules included:
 data readers - input the data from the data source
 data filters - convert the data from a simulation or
other source into another form which is more
informative or less voluminous
 data mappers - convert information into another
domain, such as 2D or 3D geometry or sound
 viewers or renderers - rendering the 2D and 3D data as
images
 control structures - display devices, recording
devices, open graphics windows
 data writers - output the original or filtered data
MVEs required no graphics expertise, allowed for rapid
prototyping and interactive modifications, promoted code
reuse, allowed new modules to be created and allowed
computations to be distributed across machines, networks
and platforms.
Earlier systems were not always good performers, especially
on larger datasets. Imaging was poor.
Newer visualization systems came out of the commercial
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animation software industry. The Wavefront Advanced
Visualizer was a modeling, animation and rendering package
which provided an environment for interactive construction
of models, camera motion, rendering and animation without
any programming. The user could use many supplied modeling
primitives and model deformations, create surface
properties, adjust lighting, create and preview model and
camera motions, do high quality rendering, and save images
to video tape.
Acquiring data is accomplished in a variety of ways: CT
scans, MRI scans, ultrasound, confocal microscopy,
computational fluid dynamics, and remote sensing. Remote
sensing involves gathering data and information about the
physical “world” by detecting and measuring phenomena such
as radiation, particles, and fields associated with objects
located beyond the immediate vicinity of a sensing
device(s). It is most often used to acquire and interpret
geospatial data for features, objects, and classes on the
Earth’s land surface, oceans, atmosphere, and in outerspace
for mapping the exteriors of planets, stars and galaxies.
Data is also obtained via aerial photography, spectroscopy,
radar, radiometry and other sensor technologies.
Another major approach to 3D visualization is Volume
Rendering. Volume rendering allows the display of
information throughout a 3D data set, not just on the
surface. Pixar Animation, a spin-off from George Lukas’s
Industrial, Light and Magic (ILM) created a volume
rendering method, or algorithm, that used independent 3D
cells within the volume, called “voxels”.
The volume was composed of voxels that each had the same
property, such as density. A surface would occur between
groups of voxels with two different values. The algorithm
used color and intensity values from the original scans and
gradients obtained from the density values to compute the
3D solid. Other approaches include ray-tracing and
splatting.
Scientific visualization draws from many disciplines such
as computer graphics, image processing, art, graphic
design, human-computer interface (HCI), cognition, and
perception. The Fine Arts are extremely useful to
Scientific Visualization. Art history can help to gain
insights into visual form as well as imagining scenarios
that have little or no data backup.
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Computer simulations have become a useful part of modeling
natural systems in physics, chemistry and biology, human
systems in economics and social science, and engineering
new technology. Simulations have rendered mathematical
models into visual representations easier to understand.
Computer models can be classified as Stochastic or
deterministic.
Stochastic models use random number generators to model the
chance or random events, such as genetic drift. A discrete
event simulation (DE) manages events in time. Most
simulations are of this type. A continuous simulation uses
differential equations (either partial or ordinary),
implemented numerically. The simulation program solves all
the equations periodically, and uses the numbers to change
the state and output of the simulation. Most flight and
racing-car simulations are of this type, as well as
simulated electrical circuits.
Other methods include agent-based simulation. In agentbased simulation, the individual entities (such as
molecules, cells, trees or consumers) in the model are
represented directly (rather than by their density or
concentration) and possess an internal state and set of
behaviors or rules which determine how the agent’s state is
updated from one time-step to the next.
Winter Simulation Conference
The Winter Simulation Conference is an important annual
event covering leading-edge developments in simulation
analysis and modeling methodology. Areas covered include
agent-based modeling, business process reengineering,
computer and communication systems, construction
engineering and project management, education, healthcare,
homeland security, logistics, transportation, distribution,
manufacturing, military operations, risk analysis, virtual
reality, web-enabled simulation, and the future of
simulation. The WSC provides educational opportunity for
both novices and experts.
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Virtual Reality
Virtual reality holds tremendous promise for the future.
It’s still in the experimental stage, but movies like the
Matrix and Minority Report are giving us a glimpse of what
could be, and most likely will be.
Virtual Reality is a three dimensional, computer generated
simulation in which one can navigate around, interact with,
and be immersed in another environment
Douglas Engelbart, an electrical engineer and former naval
radar technician, is credited with the first exploration
into VR. He viewed computers as more than glorified adding
machines. It was the 1950s, and TVs had barely turned
color. His goal was to connect the computer to a screen.
By the early 1960s, communications technology intersecting
with computing and graphics was well underway. Vacuum
tubes turned into transistors. Pinball machines were being
replaced by video games.
Scientific visualization moved from bar charts,
mathematical diagrams and line drawings to dynamic images,
using computer graphics. Computerized scientific
visualization enabled scientists to assimilate huge amounts
of data and increase understanding of complex processes
like DNA sequences, molecular models, brain maps, fluid
flows, and celestial events. A goal of scientific
visualization is to capture the dynamic qualities of a wide
range of systems and processes in images, but computer
graphics and animation was not interactive. Animation,
despite moving pictures, was static because once created,
it couldn’t be altered. Interactivity became the primary
driver in the development of VR.
By the end of the 1980s, super computers and highresolution graphic workstations were paving the way towards
a more interactive means of visualization. As computer
technology developed, MIT and other high tech research
centers began exploring Human Computer Interaction (HCI),
which is still a major area of research, now combined with
artificial intelligence.
The mouse seemed clumsy, and such devices as light pens and
touch screens were explored as alternatives. Eventually
CAD--computer-aided design--programs emerged with the
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ability of designers to model and simulate the inner
workings of vehicles, create blueprints for city
development, and experiment with computerized blueprints
for a wide range of industrial products.
Flight simulators were the predecessors to computerized
programs and models and might be considered the first
virtual reality -like environments. The early flight
simulators consisted of mock cockpits built on motion
platforms that pitched and rolled. A limitation was they
lacked visual feedback. This changed when video displays
were coupled with model cockpits.
In 1979, the military began experimenting with head-mounted
displays. By the early 1980s, better software, hardware,
and motion-control platforms enabled pilots to navigate
through highly detailed virtual worlds.
A natural consumer of computer graphics was the
entertainment industry, which, like the military and
industry, was the source of many valuable spin-offs in
virtual reality. By the 1970s, some of Hollywood’s most
dazzling special effects were computer-generated. Plus,
the video game business boomed.
One direct spin-off of entertainment’s venture into
computer graphics was the dataglove, a computer interface
device that detects hand movements. It was invented to
produce music by linking hand gestures to a music
synthesizer. NASA was one of the first customers for the
new device. The biggest consumer of the dataglove was the
Mattel company, which adapted it into the PowerGlove, and
used it in video games for kids. The glove is no longer
sold.
Helmet-mounted displays and power gloves combined with 3D
graphics and sounds hinted at the potential for
experiencing totally immersive environments. There were
practical applications as well. Astronauts, wearing
goggles and gloves, could manipulate robotic rovers on the
surface of Mars. Of course, some people might not consider
a person on Mars as a practical endeavor. But at least the
astronaut could explore dangerous terrain without risk of
getting hurt.
NASA is investigating user interfaces for robots such as
AERCam, short for Autonomous Extravehicular Robotic Camera.
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These are spherical free-flying robots being developed to
inspect spacecraft for trouble-spots. AERCam is designed
to float outside spacecraft, using small xenon-gas
thrusters and solid-state cameras to view the vehicle’s
outer surfaces and find damage in places where a human
spacewalker or an extended robotic arm can’t safely go.
With a VR system, the astronaut could maneuver the melonsized AERCam with standard hand controls while intuitive
head movements rotate AERCam to let the astronaut “look
around.”
VR is not just a technological marvel easily engaged like
sitting in a movie theater or in front of a TV. Human
factors are crucial to VR. Age, gender, health and
fitness, peripheral vision, and posture come into play.
Everyone perceives reality differently, and it’s the same
for VR. Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is a major area
of research.
The concept of a room with graphics projected from behind
the walls was invented at the Electronic Visualization Lab
at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle in 1992. The
images on the walls were in stereo to give a depth cue. The
main advantage over ordinary graphics systems is that the
users are surrounded by the projected images, which means
that the images are in the users’ main field of vision.
This environment has been dubbed, “CAVE (CAVE Automatic
Virtual Environment).”
The CAVE is a surround-screen, surround-sound, projectionbased virtual reality (VR) system. The illusion of
immersion is created by projecting 3D computer graphics
into a 10’x10’x10’ cube composed of display screens that
completely surround the viewer. It is coupled with head
and hand tracking systems to produce the correct stereo
perspective and to isolate the position and orientation of
a 3D input device. A sound system provides audio feedback.
The viewer explores the virtual world by moving around
inside the cube and grabbing objects with a three-button,
wand-like device.
Lightweight stereo glasses replace helmets, so a viewer can
walk around inside the CAVE as they interact with virtual
objects. Multiple viewers often share virtual experiences
and easily carry on discussions inside the CAVE, enabling
researchers to exchange discoveries and ideas. One user is
the active viewer, controlling the stereo projection
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reference point, while the rest of the users are passive
viewers.
The CAVE was designed from the beginning to be a useful
tool for scientific visualization. The CAVE can be coupled
to remote data sources, supercomputers and scientific
instruments via high-speed networks. Various CAVE-like
environments exist all over the world today. Projection on
all six surfaces of a room allows users to turn around and
look in all directions. Thus, their perception and
experience are never limited, which is necessary for full
immersion. The PDC Cube at the Center for Parallel
Computers at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm
in Sweden is the first fully immersive CAVE.
Any quick review of the history of optics, photography,
computer graphics, media, broadcasting and even sci-fi, is
enough to believe VR will become as commonplace as the TV
and movies. There are far too many practical applications,
such as in surgery, flight simulation, space exploration,
chemical engineering and underwater exploration.
But just wait until Hollywood stops speculating and starts
experimenting. The thought of being chased by Freddy
Kruger is one thing, but to actually be chased by Freddy
Kruger is utterly terrifying. No more jumping out of seats
when the face of a giant shark snaps its teeth as us. Now
we can really know what it’s like to be chased by cops
speeding down a thruway at 100 mph. We can feel and smell
pineapples on a tropical beach. We can catch bad guys,
defeat aliens in a starship battle, and have conversations
with Presidents in our bare feet. With virtual reality,
the only limit is the imagination.
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Sequel:
What’s Next?
With all this looking and viewing and seeing—is the world a
better place? We got museums filled with art, telescopes
as big as buildings, microscopes that reveal circling
electrons in the blood of an ant, supercomputers and
graphics workstations, mega-million dollar movies and
interactive VR games, lasers, contact lenses, and…the
Internet.
Do all these visualization tools, methods and processes
really communicate better than good old fashioned words?
The Internet seems a clumsy device, now. Interactive is a
euphemism for a lot of mouse clicking and jumping back and
forth between hyperlinks. Our backs start to ache, our
wrists go numb, and the eye strain could be blinding.
Trillions—if there could be count—of images circulate the
globe, pouring through TVs, DVDs, videos and even
Smartphones, like a tsunami of unimaginable proportion.
Still, there’s war, poverty, hate and disease. Are we
closer to a world of peace? Or, are we sending the wrong
message and is the receiver capable of interpreting it as
it was intended?
For instance, how much time did Osama Bin Laden spend
getting to know Americans before launching his series of
terrorist attacks based on such a deep well of hate? Or,
did he watch too much TV or get his impressions based on
fashion magazines? In turn, how many Americans know if the
war on terrorism is a war on Shiites or Sunnis?
World news headlines rate about the same as advertising
commercials or the comings and goings of entertainment
celebrities. Power rests in the push of a button on a
remote or the click of a mouse. It’s “information is
power” against “too much information.” And it’s hard to
tell which information is designed to inform and which
information is designed to entertain.
Seeing the future for some people is about as dramatic as
the one-liner, “Tomorrow’s just another day.” Tomorrow is
just another day filled with the same routines as
yesterday. A popular car bumper sticker expresses the most
extreme on the negative spectrum, “Life sucks, and then you
die.”
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Hopefully, the person who came up with such a black and
white view of life was being funny. If the person was
serious, fortunately there are many who disagree.
Some see a beautiful rain forest. Others see a tiger
lurking in the shadows. Some see calm ocean waves and palm
trees swaying in a tropical breeze. Others see a hurricane
on the rise. Some see the end is near. Others see a
bright tomorrow.
Seeing with Thought, Seeing with Feeling
Smartphones and iPods that play videos and mp3’s? We are
obsessed. We just can’t get enough audio/visual input.
The next step is hardwiring a TV/Movie/Media implant chip
in our brain that automatically sends and receives
audio/visual data wirelessly. But how will we filter? How
will we look inside and outside at the same time? How many
things can we focus on at one time? We already do this--we
look at something and look inside our schemata to make
comparisons. When we see something new, we compare it to
something old. Or, it gets entered as new information.
Actually, it appears--and the pun is intended--that we can
see everything at once--we see ourselves in the universe.
We see all the way into our souls and all the way out into
outerspace...or outertime. We imagine whatever we want to
imagine. However, describing what we see is not always so
easy as, say, pointing our fingers and saying, “Look!”
We even imagine things we can’t imagine, like other
dimensions. We imagine there are other dimensions, but we
haven’t a clue what they might be or if they even exist.
How can we imagine something that doesn’t exist?
It would be curious to see what the world would be like if
everyone saw God in the same way. Actually, we do. We
know right from wrong, unless we’re insane. We know it’s
wrong to hurt each other.
So just what is it that’s out of sync? Is it the madness?
We hear voices and see visions that aren’t there? Does
everyone do this, or just those labeled psychotic?
Is it a table? Can we all agree that the thing we see in
front of us is a table? Can we do this without getting
caught up in details, like, color, size, or kind of wood?
Is it a table for the rich or a cardboard box being used as
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a table?
Whatever, can we all agree--it’s a table?
But then, even if we do, where do we go from there? What
do we do with the things we see? Is seeing enough, or is
it a tool for doing something else?
Can we see love? Or is it that we see the manifestations
of love? We see it expressed, shared, and even destroyed.
Is love an idea or a feeling? And can we see ideas and
feelings? Can we hold them in our hands? Can we see
thoughts and feelings in the same way we can all see a
table? Or, to be more accurate, we see tables pretty much
the same way we see thoughts, ideas, feelings and God.
Is “love at first sight” really possible? Absolutely. We
are suddenly mesmerized, dumbfounded, confused and just
plain overwhelmed. We see nothing else but the object of
our affections. We fall in love and the world disappears.
We don’t need to see anything else, just this person we
love, but probably haven’t even met yet. We can’t stop
looking. We study everything about them, the hair, the
face, the eyes.
Songs tell the story: The Beatle’s, “I Saw Her Standing
There,” Foreigner’s “Double Vision,” Bruce Springsteen’s,
“Brilliant Disguise,” Johnny Lee’s, “Lookin’ for Love,” and
on a humorous note, Aerosmith’s, “Dude Looks like a Lady.”
And then, of course, there’s Michael Jackson’s, “I Always
Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me.”
Friends and Strangers: Seeing Eye to Eye
What is it that friends see in the same way that makes them
friends? Friends do not necessarily sit around and analyze
why they are friends. Friendship just sort of happens.
When we are kids going to school, we don’t think about who
is not in the school. We simply make friends with who ever
is around us. Step outside those boundaries and everything
changes. Or, introduce somebody who for a variety of
reasons, just doesn’t seem to fit in.
There’s a stranger in town. He doesn’t quite look like
everyone else. He dresses differently. He even has a
peculiar accent. Just don’t get too close because, well,
in this day and age, he could be a killer, or a terrorist,
or a madman of some kind. Maybe he was just released from
prison or maybe he’s on the run from the cops. He’s not
172
from around here. He didn’t grow up here.
his past, his family, his roots.
Nobody knows
But what about the stranger? What does he see? A small
town riddled with fear because it’s never stepped outside
its boundaries to see what else and who else is in the
world. Some of these people have never been on a plane.
They’ve never traveled outside the state yet alone to a
foreign country.
Whatever they know about the world is based on images from
school, a handful of books, and more so, from TV.
Everybody...looks the same. They’re all white. They all
talk the same, maybe with a funny Midwestern accent.
Nobody dresses out of the ordinary. It’s pretty much
jeans, t-shirts, and tennis shoes, whether its men or
women. Nobody is really rich, so there are no fancy gowns,
limousines or mansions on a hill.
The sad truth is that even a scenario like a stranger
coming to a small town with everyone gawking and wondering
is far from what really happens in life. Small towns
aren’t so small anymore. Apartment complexes in
particular, have opened up a whole new door for a slew of
strangers, all living in close proximity.
Apartments are worse in the big city, largely because of
transience. People come and go like the wind. If
something is going on, like a drug deal, or a beating, or
someone dresses up at night like a transvestite, no one
sees anything. They can live within a 100 feet of each
other and because of conflicting schedules, or even that
drapes are always kept closed, they never see each other.
There’s a stranger in town, and he lives next door.
Behind Closed Doors
What does a killer see in his mind? Alone in his room, he
plots and plans for the next victim. Does he see blood, or
does he see victory? There’s a cop out there who doesn’t
much care what the killer sees. The killer must be
stopped, period. Cops see the world a lot differently than
most people. They see the worst. They see things going on
in apartments that even next door neighbors didn’t see.
It’s a world full of people sneaking, hiding, cheating and
stalking.
It’s a world behind closed doors.
We can live with someone
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for years and still never know what is really going on
inside their minds. By all appearances, everything looks
fine. It’s everyday life as usual. Then the bomb drops.
Suddenly a loving, devoted wife wants a divorce. She’s
sick and tired of being ignored; being taken for granted.
He never knew.
Meanwhile, a mother wonders why a reclusive teenager always
shuts the door to her bedroom lately. But it can last only
so long. Pregnancy is not something you can keep on hiding.
We don’t see people on drugs or booze, unless they’re
stoned or bombed out of their minds, and perhaps can’t even
walk or their eyes look dazed. A little snip here, a
little snort there, a couple of drops of Visine, and no one
is the wiser. So we randomly issue drug tests. At home,
we’re convinced something is going on, because someone’s
behavior suddenly seems out of the ordinary. We don’t see
sadness, or loneliness or desperation. We don’t see
feelings of inferiority, depression, or angst.
On the streets of New York, LA, or even Paris and Bombay,
someone remarks, “I’ve seen it all.” In the big city, such
a comment is most likely true. We see wealthy businessmen
stepping over the bodies of homeless women. We see an
endless stream of cab drivers and pedestrians screaming at
each other. We sit on a subway and don’t wonder who all
these people are, only that the subway car is ridiculously
crowded, and we can’t wait to get to our stop.
One thing you definitely don’t do is stare. If a look
lasts longer than a few seconds, it could start a fight.
There are the romantic glances, but on the streets of New
York, there are a lot of charmers who look good, but
underneath, they are stalking their next victim.
But it isn’t just justifiable fear of a madman that
warrants our distrust. Sometimes we’re just in a bad mood.
We want to be left alone. We don’t want anybody looking at
us, judging us, seeing through us.
So whadda ya lookin’ at?
As Robert DeNiro so famously said in Taxi Driver, “You
lookin’ at me?”
174
Or maybe it was Humphrey Bogart:
kid.
Here’s lookin’ at you,
Ever hear the song, “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear
Shades?”
What’s Next?
Evolution is generally viewed linearly. History is a
chronological order, with an unknown originating point
following century by century, decade by decade, year by
year, day by day, second by second.
We have the calendar and the clock to prove this is so.
Both move forward. Anyone looking backwards is obviously
living in the past. Even the past to the present to the
future follows a straight line.
Life is a series of “what’s next?” Forget about what
happened. If such everyday philosophy were to hold so
true, then why do so many people spend so much time digging
up the past?
The evolution of civilization goes hand-in-hand with the
evolution of technology. But this creates a paradox since
the big bang, for instance, can’t be viewed from a single
originating point in time, although many scientists believe
such a point exists. They just can’t find it.
What about time? Didn’t time exist before the universe?
That’s a bit confusing, since time and the universe are
quite possibly one and the same thing. Time had to exist
before there’s a point in it.
The simplest answer is, of course, God. But God had to
start somewhere too. God created the heavens and earth, so
they say. God also proceeded in an orderly fashion, over
an alleged period of 7 days. But when God was doing this,
there were no people, yet alone calendars and clocks.
Apparently the sun rises and sets in a linear fashion. But
why 7 days? Why rest on the 7th? Well, it must’ve been an
exhausting experience, creating the universe and all. So
maybe God earned it.
Who or how God was created is a non-issue, as far as
believers are concerned.
175
Another paradox--or multiple paradoxes--exists in that the
universe is allegedly expanding, or radiating outward
without any seemingly real sense of direction. Space and
time does not exist linearly; space and time is everywhere.
Yet, we follow a straight line to get from one place to the
next, and as already illustrated, we move forward in time
nanosecond by nanosecond.
The same linear/non-linear debate applies to light.
Particles and/or waves move in a straight line, until they
are scattered, refracted and reflected. Gravity,
magnetism, electromagnetic radiation, light, and even
water, the desert and the arrangement of forests have both
linear and non-linear properties.
The general public just isn’t ready for chaos theory. Most
people have to go to work tomorrow and their lives move
according to a set schedule. And even chaos theory is an
attempt to put things like vast systems into a nice, neat
package, where illusive randomness is actually controlled.
Viewing life in a linear fashion has its advantages and
disadvantages. From birth to death, we view our lives
linearly. Life is a sequence of events--although many
times appearing random--where one thing seems to lead to
another. The linear view brings order and structure to our
lives.
Even wars are basically fought in a linear fashion, with
two opposing sides and a line down the middle. But anyone
soldier knows the enemy is all around, not just in front.
There is random crime and random acts of kindness. It rains
one day and then its sunny the next. Leaves fall and
pollen spreads with a wind that randomly changes
directions. Examples are limitless.
Love certainly doesn’t follow a straight line. We’re in
and out of love like the wind in the trees, even when its
love for the same person. Love does seem to have a point
of origin, similar to the Big Bang or God. It’s frequently
expressed as, “I fell in love from the moment I met you.”
If death is a mirror to life, it’s curious to know if the
other side follows the same patterns of linearity and nonlinearity as it does in life. Is death a mirror or a
window, and is there a way to get back?
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If time travel becomes possible, then we’re really in for a
ride. But even time travel is constrained by forwards and
backwards. There’s not a lot of talk about time travel to
the side.
And how do we process all these paradoxes and mysteries?
For the most part, we ignore them. Such questions are in
God’s hands, and that’s good enough for most people. The
best we can do is get on with our lives. Maybe watch a
little TV, play a little ball, go fishing, whatever.
The commercial world has absolutely no time for such
questions. No one is about to tell their boss they can’t
come to work because they’re confused as to whether time is
linear or non-linear. Things have to move in an orderly
manner so profits can be made.
Money poses an interesting challenge to the linear/nonlinear debate. Clearly, wealth is not equally distributed,
nor is the power that comes with it. Wealth, like fate,
seems to strike the lucky, even when some claim it was hard
work that moved them from poor to rich.
Fate, destiny, God, time, gravity, electromagnetic
radiation, nature--is it all well-ordered or does it all
come in a nice, neat package with a bow on it?
Discoveries seem to happen in a linear fashion, and now
we’re in a world of nanotechnology, artificial
intelligence, the Internet, genetics and colonization of
space.
Inspiration is a peculiar thing. It’s like a bunch of
funny little photons dancing around like fairies in a
Disney animated movie, spreading the light of inspiration
to all who wonder. Pretty corny, huh? Yeah, well, for all
the technological expertise combined in some of the most
advanced high tech companies in the world, the primary
output is a talking duck, a conniving coyote, a green ogre
and brooms that dance.
Communication is the reason why innovation spreads so fast.
A bunch of inventors meet at a convention. One of them
suggests seeing through a telephone. Another one balks at
such a preposterous idea. An artist starts drawing a
picture of someone watching a scene projected on a wall
with a projecting device. Another inventor with a sense of
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humor mentions talking animals. It comes time to leave and
the race is on. The inventors retreat to their humble
abodes where late into the night, under the magic of the
stars, the race is on to see who can get the first patent.
Ideas once didn’t spread so fast. Without telephones or
broadcasting devices, or even cars, an innovator had to
travel miles to the nearest town by foot or horse to meet
someone with similar whacked out notions about the
universe.
Now, crazy ideas aren’t so crazy anymore. It’s quite
obvious anything is possible. The earth is no longer flat,
humans can fly, and little robots can sail through the
bloodstream like mini-nuclear powered submarines on a
mission to destroy the enemy.
Time travel, teleportation, conversations with ghosts—it’s
all just a movie away from reality. Or, maybe it’s just a
bit of reality away from a movie. It’s hard to tell which
comes first, reality or fantasy.
The universe is full of optical illusions. Shadows dance.
Images split into two or merge into one. Too much
brightness makes us squint. Light plays tricks on our
eyes. Our brains miscalculate or misinterpret, maybe
because of outside noise, confused thought patterns, or
even our feelings. One key to understanding what we see is
to focus…not easy to do when bombarded by a tsunami of
images in a universe full of mixed messages. Perhaps a
microscope will help.
There's nothing like a refresher course in light and color
to appreciate the simple things in life. Amazing what we
take for granted. Some of the first words we ever learn as
children are tree, cloud, sky and sun. As kids, we spend
most of our time playing with colors, with trees, clouds,
the sky and sun as our favorite drawing subjects.
Getting older, we learn there is a force behind these
natural wonders, a magical, powerful force that science and
art just can't explain. Waves move across the water. A
sunset takes us through a kaleidoscope of color as clouds
cast shadows against the rays of the sun on the trees.
Something is clearly going on.
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Look again and night falls. Outcome the stars and the
glorious moon, a moon that science has done everything in
its power to turn into just a big rock in the sky.
Meanwhile, some believe the moon is a God. And when the
moon shines, goblins and fairies danced in dark forests.
Werewolves are known to prowl. Dogs bark at the moon.
Maybe that's what art is--art picks up where science leaves
off. The wind and the sun provide energy that moves the
waves and makes plants grow. That's a good thing, and we
thank science for showing us this. But art paints another
picture. Art teases us with canvasses of color and fills
our imaginations and souls with dancing shadows and bends
illusion in ways no refracting lens could ever do.
While all this is going on, the dazzle of light, color,
shadow and sound is not possible without us humans there to
experience it. Well, to put it another way, it’s us humans
that appreciate such natural magic. Do animals see what we
see? Do they experience the joy of the sun’s rays and
marvel at the sight of a rainbow? Well, they're not
talking. But, here we are, with our two eyes, taking it
all in, and wondering...
Then along comes the storytellers, to weave it all together
in a way that gives life meaning or, at times, just to
entertain us. Afterall, it's just great to be alive.
So, the bottom line is...what’s next?
What do you see?
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Appendix A:
History of Computer Graphics (and a whole lot
more)
NOTE: The following history of computer graphics was
created by SIGGRAPH. It’s been reformatted (bulleted
lists, capitalizations, etc.).
1200 - 1959
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1200 Chinese Abacus
1617 Napier’s bones
1450 Gutenberg press
1687 Principia Mathematica - Isaac Newton
1700s?
1801 Jacquard loom
1811 Luddites riot
1826 Photography (Niepce)
1830 Babbage Analytical Engine designed
1842 FAX (Alexander Bain)
1843 Morse’s telegraph installed between Philadelphia
and Washington
1864 Maxwell electromagnetic wave theory becomes
basis for radio wave propagation
1877 Edison invents phonograph
1884 Nipkow (Germany) devises scanner for scanning
and transmitting images
1885 CRT (Cathode Ray Tube)
1887 Edison patents motion picture camera
1888 Edison and Dickson design Kinetoscope - (motion
pictures from successive photos on a cylinder);
Berliner invents gramophone; Oberlin Smith publishes
basics of magnetic recording
1890 Hollerith introduces an automated punch-card
driven tabulation device for the Census Bureau
1891 Dickson uses Edison’s kinetograph to record
motion pictures
1898 Poulsen invents the Telegraphone, the first
magnetic recording device
1905 Fleming electron tube; 1905 Einstein’s Theory of
Relativity
1906 de Forest develops Audion vacuum tube amplifier
1923 Zworykin develops Iconoscope at Westinghouse
1926 First television (J.L. Baird); 1st
teleconference - between Washington and New York
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1927 Philo Farnsworth invents fully electronic TV
(First all electronic TV is made by RCA in 1932);
Motion picture film standardized at 24 fps
1928 Hollerith introduces the 80-column “punch card”
1929 BBC begins broadcasting
1930 Philo Farnsworth receives patents for
transmitting images by electronic means
1931 1st stereo recordings
1936 Magnetophone is 1st true magnetic tape recorder
1938 Valensi proposes color TV
1939 Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard design the Audio
Oscillator
1941 First U.S. regular TV broadcast; 1st TV
commercial (for Bulova watches)
1945 Whirlwind computer project starts at MIT
1946 ENIAC computer built at University of
Pennsylvania
1948 cable TV is installed
1947 Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain of Bell Labs
invent transistors (“transfer resistance”)
1949 John Whitney enters first International
Experimental Film Competition in Belgium; Williams
tube (CRT storage tube); Whirlwind computer built;
core memory developed by Wang of Harvard
1950 Cybernetics and Society - Norbert Weiner (MIT);
Ben Laposky uses oscilloscope to display waveforms
which were photographed as artwork
1951 Graphics display on vectorscope on Whirlwind
computer in first public demonstration
1952 Mr. Potato Head invented; later starred in “Toy
Story;” Air Force Project Blue Book organized to
categorize UFO sightings
1953 NTSC broadcast code
1954 FCC authorizes color TV broadcast; FORTRAN John Backus
1955 Disneyland opens; SAGE system at Lincoln Lab
uses first light pen (Bert Sutherland)
1956 Lawrence Livermore National Labs connects
graphics display to IBM 704; use film recorder for
color images; Ray Dolby, Charles Ginsberg and Charles
Anderson of Ampex develop the first videotape
recorder; Alex Poniatoff (Ampex) introduces the VR1000
videotape recorder (2”tape) - the first practical
broadcast quality VTR
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1957 1st image-processed photo at National Bureau of
Standards; Digital Equipment Corporation founded
1958 Numerical controlled digital drafting machines,
APT II (Automated Programming Tools) - MIT; CalComp
565 drum plotter; Saul Bass creates titles for
Hitchcock’s movie, Vertigo; Integrated circuit (IC, or
Chip) invented by Jack St. Clair Kilby of Texas
Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild Electronics;
John Whitney Sr. uses analog computer to make art
1959 First film recorder - General Dynamics Stromberg
Carlson 4020 (uses Charactron tube); TX-2 computer at
MIT uses graphics console; GM begins DAC program
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1960s
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1960 William Fetter of Boeing coins the term
“computer graphics” for his human factors cockpit
drawings; John Whitney Sr. founds Motion Graphics,
Inc.; LISP developed by John McCarthy; DEC PDP-1
introduced
1961 Spacewars, 1st video game, developed by Steve
Russell at MIT for the PDP-1; Catalogue (John Whitney)
1962 Information International Inc. (Triple I)
founded; Itek begins Electronic Drafting Machine
project; Mr. Computer Image ABC produced on Scanimate
by Lee Harrison
1963
 1st computer art competition, sponsored by Computers
and Automation; Sketchpad developed beginning in 1961
by Ivan Sutherland at MIT is unveiled; Mouse invented
by Doug Englebart of SRI
 Coons’ patches
 1st (?) computer generated film by Edward Zajac (Bell
Labs)
 BEFLIX developed at Bell Labs by Ken Knowlton
 Charles Csuri makes his first computer generated
artwork
 DAC-1, first commercial CAD system, developed in 1959
by IBM for General Motors is shown at JCC
 Lockheed Georgia starts graphics activity (Chase
Chasen)
 Michael Noll (Bell Labs) starts his Gaussian Quadratic
series of artwork
 Roberts hidden line algorithm (MIT)
 The Society for Information Display established
 Fetter of Boeing creates the “First Man” digital human
for cockpit studies
1964
 Project MAC (MIT)
 IBM 2250 console ($125,000) introduced with IBM 360
computer
 Poem Field by Stan Vanderbeek and Ken Knowlton
 Itek Digigraphic Program (later Control Data graphics
system)
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The BASIC programming language developed by Kurtz and
Kemeny
Ruth Weiss introduces drawing software that performs
hidden line elimination
RAND tablet input device (commercially known as
Grafacon)
Compact cassette tape (Phillips)
New York World’s Fair
Electronic character generator
1965
 1st computer art exhibition, at Technische Hochschule
in Stuttgart
 1st U.S. computer art exhibition, at Howard Wise
Gallery in New York
 Dolby Laboratories founded by Ray Dolby, inventor of
the first videotape recorder (1956)
 Adage founded
 Roberts introduces homogeneous coordinates
 Utah computer science department founded
 Bresenham Algorithm for plotting lines
 Tektronix Direct View Storage Tube (DVST)
 CADAM developed at Lockheed; CADD developed at
McDonnell Douglas
 Project DEMAND consortium (IBM, Lockheed, McDonnell
Douglas, Rockwell, TRW, Rolls Royce)
 BBN Teleputer uses Tektronix CRT
1966
 Odyssey, home video game developed by Ralph Baer of
Sanders Assoc., is 1st consumer CG product
 Group 1 FAX machines (using CCITT compression)
 Lincoln Wand developed
 Plasma Panel introduced (first developed at Illinois
in 1964 as part of the PLATO project)
 Studies in Perception I by Ken Knowlton and Leon
Harmon (Bell Labs)
 MAGI founded by Phil Mittleman
 Joint Defense Department / Industry symposium on
CAD/NC held in Oklahoma City
 IBM awards Artist-in-Residence to John Whitney, Sr.
 Loutrel hidden line algorithm
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1967
 Appel hidden line algorithm
 Steven Coons publishes his surface patch “little red
book”
 Sine Curve Man and Hummingbird created by Chuck Csuri
 Adage real time 3D line drawing system
 Lee Harrison’s ANIMAC graphic device
 GE introduces first full color real time interactive
flight simulator for NASA - Rod Rougelet
 Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) started in
New York by artists Rauschenberg and Kluver
 MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies founded by
Gyorgy Kepes
 Instant replay and Slo-Mo introduced using Ampex HS100 disc recorder
 Cornell’s program started in Architecture by Don
Greenberg
 1/2 inch open reel video tape recorder
1968
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DEC 338 intelligent graphics terminal
Tektronix 4010
Intel founded
University of Utah asks Dave Evans to form a CG
department in computer science
Warnock algorithm
Watkins algorithm
Edsger Dijkstra writes article Go To Statement
Considered Harmful which signals beginning of
structured programming
Cybernetic Serendipity: The Computer and the Arts
exhibition at London Institute of Contemporary Arts
Csuri’s Hummingbird purchased by Museum of Modern Art
for permanent collection
Permutations - John Whitney, Sr.
Sutherland Head Mounted Display (Sword of Damocles),
developed in 1966, shown (AFIPS Conference)
Evans & Sutherland Calma, Computek, Houston
Instrument, Imlac founded
ARDS terminal, Computek 400 terminal
LDS-1 ($250,000) from E&S introduces line clipping
185
1969
 Computer Image Corporation founded
 UNIX developed by Thompson and Ritchie at Bell Labs
(in PDP-7 assembly code)
 SCANIMATE commercialized - Lee Harrison
 Genesys animation system - Ron Baecker
 GRAIL (Graphics Input Language) developed at Rand
 Computer Space arcade game built by Nolan Bushnell
 Xerox PARC founded
 Lee Harrison’s CAESAR animation system
 Bell Labs builds first framebuffer (3 bits)
 Sony U-Matic 3/4” video cassette
 Intel introduces the 1 KB RAM chip
 1st use of CGI for commercials - MAGI for IBM
 Graphical User Interface (GUI) developed by Xerox
(Alan Kay)
 SIGGRAPH formed (began as special interest committee
in 1967 by Sam Matsa and Andy vanDam)
 ComputerVision, Applicon, Vector General founded
 ARPANET is born
186
1970s
1970
 Sonic Pen 3-D input device
 ISSCO (Integrated Software Systems Corporation )
founded (marketed DISSPLA software) by Peter Preuss
 Watkins algorithm for visible surfaces
 Pascal programming language developed by Wirth
 Imlac PDS-1 programmable graphics computer marketed
 John Staudhammer starts NCSU Graphics Lab at NC State
 Pierre Bezier from Renault develops Bezier freeform
curve representation
1971
 Gouraud shading
 Ramtek founded
 GINO (graphics input output specification) - Cambridge
University
 Intel 4004 4-bit processor
 Interactive Graphics for Computer-Aided Design
(Prince) published
 MCS (Manufacturing and Consulting Services) founded by
Patrick Hanratty, considered the “father” of
mechanical CAD/CAM - introduces ADAM CAD software,
which is the heart of many modern software systems
 Robert Abel and Associates founded
 Floppy disk (8”) - IBM
1972
 MAGI Synthevision started (Bo Gehring)
 CGRG founded at Ohio State
 NASA IPAD (Integrated Program for Aerospace Vehicle
Design) initiative started
 Graphics Standards Planning Committee organized by
ACM-SIGGRAPH
 The @ symbol selected for email addresses by BBN
 C language developed by Ritchie
 Emmy awarded to Lee Harrison for SCANIMATE
 Alto computer introduced by Xerox PARC (Alan Kay)
 Intel 8008 8-bit processor
 Megatek, Summagraphics, Computervision, Applicon
founded
187
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1973
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Utah hand (Catmull) and face (Parke) animations
produced
Computer Graphics and Image Processing journal begins
publication
8-bit frame buffer developed by Dick Shoup at Xerox
PARC
Sandin Image Processor - Dan Sandin, Univ. IllinoisChicago Circle
Atari formed (Nolan Bushnell)
Newell, Newell and Sancha visible surface algorithm
video game Pong developed for Atari
Graphics Symbiosis System (GRASS) developed at Ohio
State by Tom DeFanti
E&S begins marketing first commercial frame buffer
Ethernet - Bob Metcalf (Harvard)
Quantel founded
Westworld - uses 2D graphics
Circle Graphics Habitat founded at Univ. Illinois
Chicago (Tom DeFanti & Dan Sandin)
Moore’s Law (the number of transistors on a microchip
will double every year and a half) by Intel’s
chairman, Mr. Gordon Moore
Nolan Bushnell’s video game Computer Space appears in
movie Soylent Green
first SIGGRAPH conference (Boulder)
3/4 inch portapack replaces 16mm film for news
gathering
Richard Shoup develops PARC raster display
Rich Riesenfeld (Syracuse) introduces b-splines for
geometric design
Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics (Newman
and Sproull) first comprehensive graphics textbook is
published
1974
 Motion Pictures Product Group formed at III by John
Whitney, Jr. and Gary Demos
 Alex Schure opens CGL at NYIT, with Ed Catmull as
Director
 Barnhill and Riesenfeld introduce the name “ComputerAided Geometric Design” (CAGD)
 SuperPaint developed by Dick Shoup and Alvy Ray Smith
188
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TCP protocol (Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn)
DEC VT52 incorporated the first addressable cursor in
a graphics display terminal
Intel (Zilog) 8080
z-buffer developed by Ed Catmull (University of Utah)
Futureworld (sequel to Westworld) uses 3D CGI (III)
Hunger produced by Peter Foldes at National Research
Council of Canada; wins Cannes Film Festival Prix de
Jury award for animation
1975
 Phong shading - Bui-Toung Phong (University of Utah)
 Sony Betamax recorder
 USAF ICAM (Integrated Computer Aided Manufacturing)
initiative started
 Cray 1 introduced
 Altair 8800 computer
 Fractals - Benoit Mandelbrot (IBM)
 Winged edge polyhedra representation (Bruce Baumgart)
 Catmull curved surface rendering algorithm
 Bill Gates starts Microsoft
 Quantel (QUANtized TELevision) introduces the DFS3000
Digital Framestore
 Martin Newell (Utah) develops CGI teapot (physical
teapot now in the Computer Museum in Boston)
 JPL Graphics Lab developed (Bob Holzman)
 Arabesque completed (John Whitney)
 Anima animation system developed at CGRG at Ohio State
(Csuri)
1976
 MITs Visible Language Workshop founded by Muriel
Cooper
 Ed Catmull develops “tweening” software (NYIT)
 Jim Clark’s Hierarchical model for visible surface
detection
 N. Burtnyk , M. Wein, Interactive skeleton techniques
for enhancing motion dynamics in key frame animation,
CACM, V19, #10, Oct 1976, 564-569
 Dolby sound
 Jim Blinn develops reflectance and environment mapping
(University of Utah)
 Nelson Max’s sphere inversion film
189
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1977
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Ukrainian Pysanka Egg erected in Vegraville, Canada by
Ron Resch (University of Utah) to commemorate the RCMP
Sony Beta home video
Floppy disk (5 1/4”)
Apple 1 (Wozniak)
IFIP (The Internation Federation of Information
Processing) conference at Seillac in France on “The
Methodology of Computer Graphics” begins
standardization process
Computer Graphics Newsletter started by Joel Orr;
becomes Computer Graphics World in 1978
Peter Fonda’s head digitized and rendered by III for
Futureworld
Ampex VPR-1 Type C 1” video recorder
Wang word processing
“Artist and Computer”, by Ruth Leavitt
Mathematical Elements for Computer Graphics (David
Rogers) published
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak start Apple computer.
Apple Computer incorporated
VHS (Video Home System) format - Matsushita
JVC VHS home video
Apple II released
TRS-80 introduced
Frank Crow introduces antialiasing
Jim Blinn introduces a new illumination model that
considers surface “facets”
Computer Graphics World begins publication (started by
Joel and N’omi Orr as Computer Graphics Newsletter)
Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences
introduces Visual Effects category for Oscars
Nelson Max joins LLL; Jim Blinn joins JPL
R/Greenberg founded (Richard and Robert Greenberg)
SIGGRAPH CORE Graphics standard
Ampex ESSTM (Electronic Still Store) system introduced
for network sports slo-mo;adapted for use as animation
sequetial storage device
GKS (Graphical Kernal System) graphics standard
introduced
Fuchs multiprocessor visible surface algorithm
190
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Larry Cuba produces Death Star simulation for Star
Wars using Grass at UICC developed by Tom DeFanti at
Ohio State
1978
 Tom DeFanti’s GRASS system rewritten for Bally home
computer (Zgrass)
 E&S goes public
 AT&T and Canadian Telidon introduce videotex graphics
standard (NAPLPS)
 Digital Effects founded (Judson Rosebush, Jeff
Kleiser, et al)
 Lance Williams curved shadows paper
 Ikonas frame buffer - England/Whitton
 Leroy Neiman uses Ampex AVA-1TM video art system to
draw (on air) football players in Super Bowl XII
 1st CGI film title - Superman (R. Greenberg)
 Computer Graphics World begins publication
 James Blinn produces the first of a series of
animations titled The Mechanical Universe
 DEC VAX 11/780 introduced
 Video laser disc
 Bump mapping introduced (Blinn)
1979
 National Computer Graphics Association (NCGA)
organized by Peter Preuss of ISSCO and Joel Orr
 IGES graphics file format specified
 IBM 3279 color terminal
 E&S PS-300
 Motorola 68000 32-bit processor
 Atari 8-bit computers introduced
 Disney produces The Black Hole using CGI for the
opening
 Sunstone - Ed Emshwiller (NYIT)
 George Lucas hires Ed Catmull, Ralph Guggenheim and
Alvy Ray Smith to form Lucasfilm
191
1980s
1980
 Vol Libre - Loren Carpenter of Boeing
 Apollo Computer founded - introduces the 68000 based
workstation
 Turner Whitted of Bell Labs publishes ray tracing
 First NCGA conference - Arlington, Virginia - Steven
Levine, President
 Donkey Kong introduced by Nintendo (Mario named in US
release)
 IBM licenses DOS from Microsoft
 Apple Computer IPO - 4.6M shares @ $22
 Aurora Systems founded by Richard Shoup
 SIGGRAPH Core standard reorganized as ANSC X3H3.1
(PHIGS)
 EUROGRAPHICS (The European Association for Computer
Graphics) formed; first conference at Geneva
 Disney contracts Abel, III, MAGI and DE for computer
graphics for the movie Tron
 MIT Media Lab founded by Nicholas Negroponte
 Pacific Data Images founded by Carl Rosendahl
 Computer hard disk drive - Seagate
 Hanna-Barbera, largest producer of animation in the
U.S.,begins implementation of computer automation of
animation process
 Sony Walkman
 Quantel introduces Paintbox
1981
 Sony Betacam
 Tom DeFanti expands GRASS to Bally Z-50 machine
(ZGRASS) - University Illinois - Chicago Circle
 IBM introduces the first IBM PC (16 bit 8088 chip)
 DEC introduces VT100
 IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications published by
IEEE Computer Society and NCGA
 Ampex ADO® system introduced; garners an Emmy award in
1983
 Digital Productions formed by Whitney and Demos
 Cranston/Csuri Productions founded by Chuck Csuri,
Robert Kanuth and Jim Kristoff.
 R/Greenberg opens CGI division (Chris Woods)
192
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MITI Fifth Generation Computer Project announced by
Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry
REYES renderer written at LucasFilm
Penguin Software (now Polarware) introduces the
Complete Graphics System
Looker includes the virtual human character Cindy
(Susan Dey) - 1st filkm with shaded graphics(III)
Adam Powers, the Juggler produced by III
Carla’s Island - Nelson Max
1982
 The Last Starfighter (Digital Productions) begins
production
 Tron released
 The Geometry Engine (Clark)
 Jim Clark founds Silicon Graphics Inc.
 Sun Microsystems founded (sun := Stanford University
Network)
 Alain Fournier, Don Fussell, Loren Carpenter, Computer
Rendering of Stochastic Models
 Skeleton Animation System (SAS) developed at CGRG at
Ohio State (Dave Zeltzer)
 Sony still frame video camera (Mavica)
 ACM begins publication of TOG (Transactions on
Graphics)
 Tom Brighham develops morphing (NYIT)
 Adobe founded by John Warnock
 Toyo Links established in Tokyo
 Quantel Mirage
 Symbolics Graphics Division founded
 EPCOT Center opens
 Atari develops the data glove.
 Where the Wild Things Are test (MAGI) - digital
compositing used to combine CG backgrounds and
traditional animation
 AutoDesk founded; AutoCAD released
 ILM computer graphics division develops “Genesis
effect” for Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan
1983
 Particle systems (Reeves - Lucasfilm)
 SGI IRIS 1000 graphics workstation
193
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Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS) introduced by
Tiller (Note: this date is somewhat misleading, since
the concept built on the work of Vesprille (1975),
Riesenfeld (1973), Knapp (1979), Coons (1968) and
Forrest (1972))
Road to Point Reyes - Lucasfilm
The Last Starfighter released
Jim Blinn receives the first (1983) ACM SIGGRAPH CG
Achievement Award
Ivan Sutherland receives the first (1983) ACM SIGGRAPH
Steven A. Coons Award
Steve Dompier’s “Micro Illustrator”
UNIX System V
Utah Raster Toolkit introduced (Spencer Thomas)
Autodesk introduces first PC-based CAD software
Alias founded in Toronto by Stephen Bingham, Nigel
McGrath, Susan McKenna and David Springer
Mip-mapping introduced for efficient texture mapping
(Williams - NYIT)
Sony and Philips introduce 1st CD player
1984
 Robert Able & Associates produces the 1st computer
generated 30 second commercial used for Super Bowl
(Brilliance)
 Wavefront Technologies is the first commercially
available 3D software package (founded by Mark
Sylvester, Larry Barels and Bill Kovacs )
 Thomson Digital Image (TDI) founded
 Jim Clark receives the 1984 ACM SIGGRAPH CG
Achievement Award
 International Resource Development report predicts the
extinction of the keyboard in the next decade
 A-buffer (or alpha-buffer) introduced by Carpenter of
Lucasfilm
 Distributed ray tracing introduced by Lucasfilm
 Cook shading model (Lucasfilm)
 14.5 minute computer generated IMAX film (The Magic
Egg) shown at SIGGRAPH 84 - 18 teams; 20 segments
 Universal Studios opens CG department
 First Macintosh computer is sold; introduced with Clio
award winning commercial 1984 during Super Bowl
 McDonnel Douglas introduces the Polhemus 3Space
digitizer and body Tracker
194
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The Cornell Box invented by Cohen
Radiosity born - Cornell University
John Lasseter joins Lucasfilm
Motorola 68020
Digital Productions (Whitney and Demos) get Academy
Technical Achievement Award for CGI simulation of
motion picture photography
Lucasfilms introduces motion blur effects
Porter and Duff compositing algorithm (Lucasfilm)
The Adventures of Andre and Wally B. (Lucasfilm)
1985
 Commodore launches the new Amiga
 Loren Carpenter receives the 1985 ACM SIGGRAPH CG
Achievement Award
 Pierre Bezier receives the 1985 ACM SIGGRAPH Steven A.
Coons Award
 Sogitec founded (Xavier Nicolas)
 Max Headroom - computer-mediated live action figure
 Judson Rosebush Co. started
 Abel Image Research takes Robert Abel & Associates to
shaded graphics business
 Tony de Peltrie airs
 Stereo TV
 Biosensor (Toyo Links)
 Cray 2
 GKS standard
 Quantel Harry is first non-linear editor
 X10R1 format
 CGW predicts 90s graphics workstation
 Targa 16 board (AT&T) goes to market
 Pixar Image Computer goes to market
 NeXT Incorporated founded by Steve Jobs and five
former Apple senior managers
 Perlin’s noise functions introduced (Ref: Perlin, Ken.
An Image Synthesizer. Computer Graphics (SIGGRAPH 85
Proceedings) 19(3) July 1985, p. 287-296.)
 CD-ROMs High Sierra (ISO9660) standard introduced
 PostScript (Adobe - John Warnock)
 PODA creature animation system developed by Girard and
Maciejewski at Ohio State
 Boss Films founded by Richard Edlund
195
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MIT Media Lab moves to new home
Young Sherlock Holmes stained glass knight
(Lucasfilm), 2010 (Boss Films)and Looker (DP)
1986
 The Great Mouse Detective was the first animated film
to be aided by CG.
 Pixar purchased from Lucasfilm by Steve Jobs
 X-Window System (MIT Project Athena)
 Trancept Systems founded by Nick England and Mary
Whitton - graphics board for Sun
 CGI group starts at Industrial Light and Magic (Doug
Kay and George Joblove)
 Softimage founded by Daniel Langlois in Montreal
 Sun Microsystems goes public
 mental images founded in Berlin
 Computer Associates acquires ISSCO
 Microsoft goes public (IPO raises $61M; share prices
go from $21 to $28)
 Apple IIgs introduced
 Silicon Graphics Incorporated IPO
 SGI IRIS 3000 (MIPS processor)
 Turner Whitted receives the 1986 ACM SIGGRAPH CG
Achievement Award
 Waldo project introduces motion capture (Digital
Productions)
 Kajiya’s Rendering Equation
 Omnibus assumes Robert Able & Associates and Digital
Productions in hostile takeovers by John Pennie and
investors
 Whitney/Demos Productions founded
 Intel introduces 82786 graphics coprocessor chip;
Texas Instruments introduces TMS34010 Graphics System
Processor
 NSFNet
 Luxo Jr. nominated for Oscar (first CGI film to be
nominated - Pixar)
 TIFF (Aldus)
 Scitex founded for prepress
1987
 GIF format (CompuServe), JPEG format (Joint
Photographic Experts Group)
196
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Willow (Lucasfilm) popularizes morphing
Max Headroom debuts
LucasArts formed
Adobe Illustrator
CGM (Computer Graphics Metafile) standard
Side Effects Software established
VGA (Video Graphivs Array) invented by IBM
Windows 2.0, MS/OS 2, Excel
Sun 4 SPARC workstation
Reynolds’ flocking behavior algorithm (Symbolics)
Stanley and Stella in: Breaking the Ice
Rob Cook receives the 1987 ACM SIGGRAPH CG Achievement
Award
Don Greenberg receives the 1987 ACM SIGGRAPH Steven A.
Coons Award
Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design
(ACCAD) founded at Ohio State (formerly CGRG)
Omnibus closes, eliminating DP and Abel
Cranston/Csuri Productions closes
Marching Cubes algorithm (Lorensen and Cline - GE)
Metrolight Studios, RezN8 Productions, Kleiser/Walczak
Construction Co., DeGraf/Wahrman founded
1988
 PICT format (Apple)
 Apple sues Microsoft for copyright infringement for
GUI
 GKS, PHIGS standards
 Prime Computer acquires Computervision
 Solid Texturing introduced (Perlin Noise Functions)
(Ref: K. Perlin. An image synthesizer. Computer
Graphics, 19(3):287--296, 1985)
 Al Barr receives the 1988 ACM SIGGRAPH CG Achievement
Award
 Internet Worm infects servers all over the world
 Gary Demos founds DemoGraFX
 Open Software Foundation (OSF)
 NeXT Cube - For $6500, it features: 25-MHz 68030
processor and 68882 math coprocessor, 8 MB RAM, 17inch monochrome monitor, 256 MB read/write magnetooptical drive, and object-oriented NeXTSTEP operating
system.
 JCGL purchased by NAMCO
197
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US Patent awarded to Pixar for RenderMan
Who Framed Roger Rabbit mixes live action and
animation
Willow (Lucasfilm) uses morphing in a feature film
D-2 composite video format introduced by Ampex
Disney and Pixar develop CAPS (Computer Animation
Paint System) (academy technical award in 1992)
PIXAR wins Academy award for Tin Toy
1989
 John Warnock receives the 1989 ACM SIGGRAPH CG
Achievement Award
 David Evans receives the 1989 ACM SIGGRAPH Steven A.
Coons Award
 8MM videotape introduced by Sony
 Adobe Photoshop
 PHIGS+
 OSF Motif V1.0 released
 Intel 80486
 Mental ray renderer released (integrated with
Wavefront (1992), Softimage (1993), Maya (2002)) awarded AMPAS Technical Achievment Award in 2002
 HP buys Apollo
 Computervision acquires Calma
 ILM creates the Abyss
 PIXAR starts marketing RenderMan
198
1990s
1990
 Microsoft ships Windows 3.0
 NewTek Video Toaster
 First edition of Graphics Gems published by Academic
Press (Andrew Glassner, editor)
 US Patent awarded to Pixar for point sampling
 Richard Shoup and Alvy Ray Smith receive the 1990 ACM
SIGGRAPH CG Achievement Award
 3D Studio (AutoDesk)
 Windows 3.0
 IBM RS6000 workstation
 John Wiley & Sons begins publishing The Journal of
Visualization and Computer Animation
1991
 World Wide Web (CERN)
 Jim Kajiya receives the 1991 ACM SIGGRAPH CG
Achievement Award
 Andy van Dam receives the 1991 ACM SIGGRAPH Steven A.
Coons Award
 Disney and PIXAR agree to create 3 films, including
the first computer animated full-length film Toy Story
 ILM produces Terminator 2
 The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences
Special Achievement Award for Visual Effects for Total
Recall (Metrolight Studios)
 Beauty and the Beast (Disney)
 Symbolics Graphics Division sold to Nichimen Graphics
 Motorola 68040
 Kodak PhotoCD
 JPEG/MPEG
 SunSoft - software subsidiary of Sun Microsystems
 SGI Indigo workstation
 Disney (Randy Cartwright, David Coons, Lem Davis, Tom
Hahn, Jim Houston, Mark Kimball, Dylan Kohler, Peter
Nye, Mike Shaantzis, David Wolf) get Academy
Scientific and Engineering Award for CAPS production
system.
 Ray Feeney, Richard Keeney and Richard Lundell get
Academy Scientific and Engineering Award for the
Solitair Film Recorder .
199
1992
 QuickTime introduced (Apple)
 Henry Fuchs receives the 1992 ACM SIGGRAPH CG
Achievement Award
 Softimage goes public
 SGI acquires MIPS
 OpenGL (SGI) released
 University of Illinois debuts CAVE virtual reality
technology at SIGGRAPH 92
 Lawnmower Man (Effects by Angel Studios and Xaos)
 US Patent awarded to Pixar for Non-Affine Image
Warping
 VIFX uses flock animation with Prism software to
create large groups of animals
 Tom Brigham and Doug Smythe and ILM get Academy
Technical Achievement Award for morphing technique
(MORF)
 Loren Carpenter, Rob Cook, Ed Catmull, Tom Porter, Pat
Hanrahan, Tony Apodaca and Darwyn Peachey get the
Academy Scientific and Engineering Award for Renderman
 Novell buys UNIX from AT&T - $150M (transfers UNIX
trademark to X/Open standards organization in 1993)
1993
 February (premiere) issue of DV magazine advises “[to
be able to do digital video, get] the most souped up
system you can get your hands on. A fast processor
(68040 on Amiga or Mac, 80486 on PC) and lots of RAM
(8-64 MB) are in order. So is a large hard drive (200
MB - 1 GB) if you want to take on serious production.”
 Disk array and compression codecs allow for nonlinear
editing and full motion video
 Academy Scientific and Engineering Award is given to
Les Dittart, Mark Leather, Doug Smythe and George
Joblove for the development of the Digital Motion
Picture Retouching System (rig removal and dirt
cleanup)
 GPS system
 Adobe Acrobat
 Pat Hanrahan receives the 1993 ACM SIGGRAPH CG
Achievement Award
 Ed Catmull receives the 1993 ACM SIGGRAPH Steven A.
Coons Award
 Jurassic Park - ILM and Steven Spielberg
200
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1994
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Wavefront buys TDI
Wired Magazine launched
Windows NT
Babylon 5 uses Amiga and Macintosh generated CGI
Mosaic browser (NCSA)
Xaos Tools Pandemonium image processor for the SGI
Doom released
Myst released (Cyan) - in 1998, it became the top
selling game of all time
Digital Domain founded by James Cameron, Stan Winston,
and Scott Ross
SGI and Nintendo team up for Nintendo 64 product
ILM earns Oscar for special effects for Jurassic Park
Microsoft acquires Softimage - announces Windows 95
Iomaga Zip drive
Linux 1.0 released
Reboot (CG cartoon) uses 3D characters (Mainframe
Entertainment)
Direct Broadcast Satellite service
SGI founder Jim Clark resigns, forms Mosaic
Communications
Netscape browser
VRML introduced (Mark Pesce)
HDTV standard for transmission adopted in US
The AMPAS Academy Award of Merit goes to Peter and
Paul Vlahos for Ultimatte electronic blue screen
compositing.
Academy Scientific and Engineering Awards go to Gary
Demos and Dan Cameron of III, David Difrancesco and
Gary Starkweather of Pixar, and Scott Squires of ILM
for pioneering work in film scanning; Lincoln Hu and
Mike Mackenzie of ILM and Glenn Kennel and Mike Davis
of Kodak for development work on a linear array CCD
film input scanning system; and Ray Feeney, Will
McCown and Bill Bishop of RFX and Les Dittert of PDI
for their development work on an area array CCD film
input scanning system
Academy Technical Achievement Awards go to Mike Boudry
of the Computer Film Company for pioneering work in
film input scanning; and David and Lloyd Addleman for
their inventions in digital image compositing.
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US Patent awarded to Pixar for creating, manipulating
and displaying images
Facetracker used by SimmGraphics to animate facial
expressions for Super Mario
Ken Torrance receives the 1994 ACM SIGGRAPH CG
Achievement Award
1995
 Toy Story (Pixar)
 DreamWorks SKG founded (Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey
Katzenberg and David Geffen)
 DreamWorks SKG and Microsoft form DreamWorks
Interactive
 Internet Explorer 2.0
 amazon.com established
 Academy Scientific and Engineering Award goes to Alvy
Ray Smith, Ed Catmull, Tom Porter and Tom Duff (Pixar)
for pioneering inventions in digital compositing.
 Academy Technical Achievement Awards go to Gary Demos,
David Ruhoff, Dan Cameron and Michelle Feraud for
creation of the Digital Productions digital film
compositing system; the Computer Film Company for the
CFC Digital Film Compositor; and Doug Smythe, Lincoln
Hu,, Doug Kay and ILM for the ILM digital film
compositing system.
 US Patent awarded to Pixar for image volume data
 John Lasseter of Pixar gets Academy Award for
development and application of techniques used in Toy
Story
 Kurt Akeley (SGI) receives the 1995 ACM SIGGRAPH CG
Achievement Award
 Jose Encarnacao receives the 1995 ACM SIGGRAPH Steven
A. Coons Award
 Wavefront and Alias merge
 Pixar goes public with 6.9M share offering
 Netscape IPO ($58.25/share)
 Sony Playstation introduced
 Sun introduces Java
 Internet 2 unveiled
 MP3 standard format developed
 MSNBC debuts
1996
 John Whitney passes away (1922-1996)
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1997
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Quake hits game market
Marc Levoy receives the 1996 ACM SIGGRAPH CG
Achievement Award
Academy Scientific and Engineering Awards go to Jim
Hourihan for particle systems in Dynamation; Brian
Knep, Zoran Kacic-Alesic and Tom Williams of ILM for
the Viewpaint 3D Paint system; and Bill Reeves for the
original development and concept of particle systems.
Academy Technical Achievement Awards go to Jim Kajiya
of Cal Tech and Tim Kay for pioneering work in the
creation of CGI hair and fur; Nestor Burtnyk and
Marceli Wein of the National Research Center of Canada
for computer assisted key framing for animation; Garth
Dickie for shape-driven warping and morphing in the
Elastic Reality Special Effects System; Jeff Yost,
Christian Rouet, David Benson and Florian Kainz for
the development of a system to create and control hair
and fur in CGI; Brian Knep, Craig Hayes, Rick Sayre
and Tom Williams of ILM for the creation and
development of the direct input device; and Ken Perlin
for the development of the Perlin Noise technique.
Colossal Pictures files Chapter 11 bankruptcy
Yahoo! IPO ($43/share)
eBay launched
SGI buys Cray Research - $764M
SGI introduces O2 workstation
Disney purchases DreamQuest Images; Dreamworks buys
interest in PDI
PalmPilot introduced
Windows 95 ships
VIFX joins with Blue Sky
Bryce 3D
Riven
DVD technology unveiled
SGI Octane
IBM Deep Blue wins at chess
Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz receives the 1997 ACM
SIGGRAPH CG Achievement Award
James Foley receives the 1997 ACM SIGGRAPH Steven A.
Coons Award
Academy Scientific and Engineering Awards go to Bill
Kovacs and Roy Hall for the engineering efforts that
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result in the Wavefront Advanced Visualizer software;
Richard Shoup, Alvy Ray Smith and Tom Porter for the
development of digital paint systems; John Gibson, Rob
Kreiger, Milan Novacek, Glen Ozymok, and Dave Springer
for the development of geometric modeling in Alias
PowerAnimator; Craig Reynolds for pioneering
contributions to 3D computer animation; Eben Ostby,
Bill Reeves, Sam Leffler and Tom Duff for the Pixar
Marionette animation system; and Dominique Boisvert,
Rejean Gagne, Daniel Langlois, and Richard Lapierriere
for the Actor component of the Softimage animation
system.
Academy Technical Achievement Awards go to Jim
Keating, Michael Wahrman and Richard Hollander for the
Wavefront Advanced Visualizer software development;
Greg Hermanovic, Kim Davidson, Mark Elendt and Paul
Breslin for the development of PRISMS software; and
Richard Chuang, Glenn Entis and Carl Rosendahl for the
PDI animation system.
Pixar interactive division dissolved
Microsoft sued by Justice Dep’t
Apple Computer acquires NexT
1998
 Titanic becomes the largest grossing motion picture in
US history
 Alias Maya released
 Quicktime 3.0 released
 Google launched
 Boss Films closes
 Riven released
 Sun gets back into graphics with the Darwin Ultra
series of workstations
 MPEG-4 standard announced
 XML standard
 CGI cartoon Voltron produced in US
 SGI and Microsoft form partnership to develop APIs;
SGI will develop NT-based PCs
 Geri’s Game (Pixar) - awarded the Academy Award for
Animated Short
 Colossal Pictures emerges from Chapter 11 bankruptcy
 Avid purchases SoftImage from Microsoft
 The SIGGRAPH Conference celebrates its 25th
Anniversary in Orlando
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Jim Blinn delivers the SIGGRAPH 98 Keynote address
Michael Cohen (Microsoft) receives the 1998 ACM
SIGGRAPH CG Achievement Award
Maxine Brown receives the first SIGGRAPH Outstanding
Service Award
Academy Technical Achievement Awards go to Doug Roble
(Digital Domain) and Thad Beier (Hammerhead) for
Tracking Technology; Nick Foster (PDI) for water
simulation systems; David Difrancesco, Bala Manian and
Tom Noggle for laser film recording and Cary Philips
for the ILM Caricature animation system
Academy Scientific and Engineering Awards go to Gary
Tregaski for the primary design and Dominique
Boisvert, Philipe Panzini and Andre Leblanc for the
development of the Flame and Inferno software; Roy
Ference, Steve Schmidt, Richard Federico, Rockwell
Yarid and Mike McCrackan for the design and
development of the Kodak Lightning laser recorder.
1999
 The graphics world loses David Evans at age 74
 Bunny (Chris Wedge - Blue Sky) - awarded the Academy
Award for Animated Short
 Star wars Episode One - The Phantom Menace uses 66
digital characters composited with live action
 VIFX and Rhythm & Hues merge
 The graphics world loses Pierre Bezier
 Silicon Graphics Incorporated changes its name to SGI
 Fred Brooks receives the Turing Award
 NewTek ports Toaster to NT
 Melissa computer virus
 SIGGRAPH celebrates its 30th Anniversary as an
organization at SIGGRAPH 99 in Los Angeles
 Tony DeRose (Pixar) receives the 1999 ACM SIGGRAPH CG
Achievement Award
 Jim Blinn receives the 1999 ACM SIGGRAPH Steven A.
Coons Award
 SGI cuts Cray, NT production and High end graphic
design
 Side Effects Houdini ported to Linux
 Napster created
 Toy Story 2 produced by Pixar
 Stuart Little produced by Sony Pictures Imageworks
 Fantasia 2000 produced by Disney
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Disney’s DreamQuest and Feature Animation join to form
The Secret Lab (TSL)
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New Millennium
2000
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Playstation 2
SGI sells Cray to Tera Computer
Human genome mapped by Celera
Microsoft X-Box prototype shown at SIGGRAPH 2000
Dinosaur produced by Disney
The graphics world loses Phil Mittleman (MAGI)
Walking with Dinosaurs - Framestore (UK)
Mission to Mars effects produced by ILM and The Secret
Lab
Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Award of
Merit awarded to Rob Cook, Loren Carpenter and Ed
Catmull for the significant advancements to the field
of motion picture rendering as exemplified in Pixar’s
Renderman
Academy Technical Achievement Awards go to Venkat
Krishnamurthy for the Paraform software for digital
form development; and George Burshukov, Kim Libreri
and Dan Piponi for image based rendering
SIGGRAPH 2000 held in New Orleans
Tom DeFanti and Copper Giloth receive the 2000
SIGGRAPH Outstanding Service Award
David Salesin receives the 2000 ACM SIGGRAPH CG
Achievement Award
Hollow Man produced by Sony
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Centropolis)
Maya ported to Macintosh
Mac OS-X introduced
2001
 SIGGRAPH 2001 held in Los Angeles
 Lance Williams receives the 2001 ACM SIGGRAPH Steven
A. Coons Award
 Andrew Witkin receives the 2001 ACM SIGGRAPH CG
Achievement Award
 Paul Debevec receives the 2001 ACM SIGGRAPH
Significant New Researcher Award
 The graphics world loses Bob Abel (Sept 23)
 Disney’s Secret Lab closes
 Apple iPod
 Side Effects Houdini ported to Sun
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AOL/TimeWarner merger
Autodesk acquires Media100 software product line
Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format introduced by Dolby
Labs and Fraunhofer Institute
Windows XP
Academy Technical Achievement Awards go to Garland
Stern for the Cel Paint software system; Uwe
Sassenberg and Rolf Schneider for the 3D Equalizer
matchmove system; Lance Williams for pioneering
influence in animation and effects; Bill Spitzak, Paul
Van Camp, Jonathan Egstad and Price Pethal for the
NUKE-2D compositing software; Steve Sullivan and Eric
Shafer for the ILM Motion and Structure Recovery
System (MARS); and John Anderson, Jim Hourihan, Cary
Philips and Sebastion Marino for the ILM Creature
Dynamics System
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences
approve a new category for the Oscars titled Best
Animated Feature Film Award. Nine films were declared
eligible: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Jimmy
Neutron: Boy Genius, Marco Polo: Return to Xanadu,
Monsters, Inc., Osmosis Jones, The Prince of Light,
Shrek, The Trumpet of the Swan, and Waking Life
Significant FX movies - Final Fantasy (Square),
Monsters Inc.(Pixar), Harry Potter, A.I., Lord of the
Rings, Shrek (PDI), The Mummy Returns (ILM), Tomb
Raider (Cinesite), Jurassic Park III, Pearl Harbor
(ILM), Planet of the Apes (Asylum)
Microsoft xBox and Nintendo Gamecube released
2002
 SIGGRAPH 2002 held in San Antonio, Texas
 Bert Hertzog (Fraunhofer Center for Research in
Computer Graphics) receives the 2002 Outstanding
Service Award for extraordinary service to ACM
SIGGRAPH by a volunteer
 David Kirk (NVIDIA) receives the 2002 ACM SIGGRAPH CG
Achievement Award
 HP / Compaq merger
 William Fetter (Boeing) passes away.
 Steven Gortler (Harvard Univ) receives the 2002 ACM
SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher Award
 Alias|Wavefront, an SGI company, was awarded an
Academy Award of Merit Oscar at the Scientific and
Technical Awards ceremony of the Academy of Motion
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Picture Arts and Sciences for its development of Maya
software.
Mark Elendt, Paul Breslin, Greg Hermanovic and Kim
Davidson receive a Scientific and Engineering Award
for their continued development of the procedural
modeling and animation components of their Prisms
program, as exemplified in the Houdini software
package.
ACADEMY TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS: To Dick Walsh
for the development of the PDI/ Dreamworks Facial
Animation System. To Thomas Driemeyer and to the
mathematicians, physicists and software engineers of
Mental Images for their contributions to the Mental
Ray rendering software for motion pictures.
To Eric
Daniels, George Katanics, Tasso Lappas and Chris
Springfield for the development of the Deep Canvas
rendering software.
2003
 Atari Games Corporation (Midway Games West) out of
business.
 Oscar nominees for Best animated short film: THE
CATHEDRAL ,Platige Image, Tomek Baginski; THE
CHUBBCHUBBS!,Sony Pictures Imageworks,Eric Armstrong
(WINNER); DAS RAD , Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg
GmbH, Chris Stenner and Heidi Wittlinger; MIKE’S NEW
CAR, Pixar Animation Studios,Pete Docter and Roger
Gould; MT. HEAD, Yamamura Animation Production, Koji
Yamamura; for Achievement in visual effects: THE LORD
OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS, Jim Rygiel, Joe Letteri,
Randall William Cook and Alex Funke (WINNER); SPIDERMAN, John Dykstra, Scott Stokdyk, Anthony LaMolinara
and John Frazier, STAR WARS EPISODE II ATTACK OF THE
CLONES, Rob Coleman, Pablo Helman, John Knoll and Ben
Snow;ICE AGE nominated for Best Animated Feature Film
 Dolby Labs acquires DemoGraFX, Gary Demos’ company
 SIGGRAPH 2003 held in San Diego
 David Brown (founder - Blue Sky and ex of MAGI) passes
away
 Pat Hanrahan (Stanford) receives the 2003 ACM SIGGRAPH
Steven A. Coons Award
 Peter Schrøder (Cal Tech) receives the 2003 ACM
SIGGRAPH CG Achievement Award
 Mathieu Desbrun (USC) receives the 2003 ACM SIGGRAPH
Significant New Researcher Award
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The Cathedral selected as Best Short Film in SIGGRAPH
Electronic Theatre
Apple introduces the Power Mac G5
Alias/Wavefront becomes Alias
2004
 Jim Clark elected to Fellow in Academy of Arts and
Sciences
 Oscar nominees for Best animated short film: Harvie
Krumpet - Adam Elliot (winner); Boundin’ - Bud Luckey;
Destino - Dominique Monfery, Roy Edward Disney; Gone
Nutty - Carlos Saldanha, John C. Donkin; Nibbles Christopher Hinton; for Best animated feature :
Finding Nemo - Andrew Stanton (winner); Brother Bear Aaron Blaise, Robert Walker; Triplettes de Belleville,
Les - Sylvain Chomet; for Achievement in Visual
Effects: Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Jim Rygiel, Joe Letteri, Randall William Cook, Alex
Funke (winner); Master and Commander: The Far Side of
the World - Daniel Sudick, Stefen Fangmeier, Nathan
McGuinness, Robert Stromberg; Pirates of the
Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl - John Knoll,
Hal T. Hickel, Charles Gibson, Terry D. Frazee
 Academy Scientific and Engineering Awards go to
Stephen Regelous for the design and development of
Massive, the autonomous agent animation system used
for the battle sequences in “The Lord of the Rings”
trilogy. Academy Technical Achievement Awards go to
Christophe Hery, Ken McGaugh, and Joe Letteri for
their groundbreaking implementations of practical
methods for rendering skin and other translucent
materials using subsurface scattering techniques;
Henrik Wann Jensen, Stephen R. Marschner, and Pat
Hanrahan for their pioneering research in simulating
subsurface scattering of light in translucent
materials as presented in their paper “A Practical
Model for Subsurface Light Transport.”
 SIGGRAPH 2004 held in Los Angeles
 Steve Cunningham and Judith Brown receive the 2004
Outstanding Service Award for extraordinary service to
ACM SIGGRAPH by a volunteer
 Hugues Hoppe (Microsoft) receives the 2004 ACM
SIGGRAPH CG Achievement Award
 Zoran Popovic (Univ. Washington) receives the 2004 ACM
SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher Award
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Chris Landreth’s Ryan selected for Jury Award in
SIGGRAPH Electronic Theatre; Sejong Park’s Birthday
Boy selected Best Animated Short
2005
 Oscar nominees for Best animated short film: Sejong
Park & Andrew Gegory - Birthday Boy; Jeff Fowler & Tim
Miller - Gopher Broke; Bill Plympton - Guard Dog; Mike
Gabriel & Baker Bloodworth - Lorenzo; Chris Landreth Ryan; for Best animated feature : Brad Bird - The
Incredibles; Bill Damasschka - Shark Tale; Andrew
Adamson - Shrek 2; for Achievement in Visual Effects:
Roger Guyett, Tim Burke, John Richardson and Bill
George - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban;
John Nelson, Andrew R. Jones, Erik Nash and Joe
Letteri - I, Robot; John Dykstra, Scott Stokdyk,
Anthony LaMolinara and John Frazier - Spider-Man 2
 Academy Scientific and Technical Awards go to Dr.
Julian Morris, Michael Birch, Dr. Paul Smyth and Paul
Tate for the development of the Vicon motion capture
technology; Dr. John O. B. Greaves, Ned Phipps,
Antonie J. van den Bogert and William Hayes for the
development of the Motion Analysis motion capture
technology; Dr. Nels Madsen, Vaughn Cato, Matthew
Madden and Bill Lorton for the development of the
Giant Studios motion capture technology; Alan Kapler
for the design and development of Storm , a software
toolkit for artistic control of volumetric effects.
 SIGGRAPH 2005 held in Los Angeles
 Steve Cunningham and Judith Brown receive the 2004
Outstanding Service Award for extraordinary service to
ACM SIGGRAPH by a volunteer
 Tomoyuki Nishita (Tokyo University) receives the 2005
ACM SIGGRAPH Steven Anson Coons Award
 Jos Stam (Alias) receives the 2005 ACM SIGGRAPH CG
Achievement Award
 Ron Fedkiw (Stanford) receives the 2005 ACM SIGGRAPH
Significant New Researcher Award
 Shane Acker ‘s 9 selected for Best of Show in SIGGRAPH
Electronic Theatre; Fallen Art and La Migration
Bigoudenn selected for Jury Honors
 Autodesk agrees to purchase Alias for $182M.
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Appendix B:
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A Sampling of CG Software Programs Used in
Moviemaking
Composer (compositing)
Inferno (plate treatment)
Proprietary (lighting; other tools)
Alias (modeling)
Softimage (matchmove)
Houdini (animation light set up)
Renderman (rendering)
3D Studiopaint (textures)
Photoshop (textures)
Matador (textures)
SGI (super computers and graphics workstations)
Indigo
O2
Origin
Challenge
Octane
Imageworks
Dynamation
Roto
PowerAnimator
Maya
Commotion
FormZ
Electric Image
After Effects
Mojo
Caricature
Isculpt
ViewPaint
Irender
Ishade
CompTime
Fred (not a person, but a name of software)
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Appendix C:
Special Effects Glossary (partial)
Animatronics: puppets of human, animal, or creature form
controlled by an operator manually or remotely via
electronic or radio control.
Blue-screen photography (also green-screen): technique of
filming a subject in front of a blue- or green-screen; the
blue or green background is then removed through optical or
digital processes, allowing the subject, or element, to be
isolated for compositing with another element. Often
characters are filmed with a blue-screen in order to place
them in a different scene, or on a miniature set.
Composite: to combine two or more individual images onto
one piece of film by photographic or digital means. Early
compositing was accomplished in the camera by masking part
of the scene when filming, rewinding the film and removing
the matte and shooting again to expose the previously
masked portion. The photographic technology of the optical
printer revolutionized visual effects in the 1920s. In the
1990s, digital compositing is commonplace, in which
multiple film images are scanned into the computer,
combined digitally, and output to a single piece of film.
Computer generated imagery (CGI): Images created with the
use of a computer. Also called computer graphics (CG),
computer animation, or digital animation.
Element: one photographic image, which will be composited
with others to create a complete visual effects shot.
Gag (also trick):
a special effect.
Glass shot: background scenery painted on glass that is
positioned in front of the camera and filmed so that it
appears to be part of the scene.
Hanging miniature: a miniature suspended in front of the
camera. When viewed through the lens, it appears to be
part of a structure in the scene. In the Ben Hur (1925)
chariot race scene, only the lower part of the coliseum was
built. The upper tiers, including thousands of tiny
“spectators” mounted on rods to allow them to stand, was a
hanging miniature.
Matte (also mask):
Early filmmakers created in-camera
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composites by covering part of the lens with a mask while
filming, or placing a sheet of glass with a blacked-out
area between the camera and the scene, to prevent a portion
of the film from being exposed.
The cameraman would then rewind the film, and shoot again
with the mask removed and the previously exposed area
covered, thus combining two images in one shot. In The
Playhouse, (1921), Buster Keaton used this method to put
himself on-stage as nine different characters. A
stationary matte marks off a static defined area; a
traveling matte follows the silhouette of a moving
character or object and changes shape from frame to frame.
Matte painting: painting of elaborate background scenery
that can be composited with live action or miniatures. They
were originally painted on glass, but artists now often
create them with the computer.
Mechanical effects (also called practical or physical
effects): special effects created on-set in front of the
camera which may not require additional photographic
manipulation. Includes pyrotechnics, animatronics
creatures, make-up effects, flying with wires.
Motion-control camera: a camera controlled by a computer,
which can be programmed to precisely duplicate the same
movement repeatedly. With motion control, multiple
elements can be filmed in exactly the same way, allowing
the images to be aligned for compositing.
Multiple exposure: the photographing of two images onto
the same piece of film.
Optical printer: device consisting of a projector and
camera with lenses facing each other; in the process called
compositing, two or more pieces of film with elements of a
scene are placed in the projector and photographed together
onto a new piece of film in the camera.
Pyrotechnics: the controlled use of incendiary materials
to create explosions, fires, and smoke.
Rear projection: a previously filmed background scene is
projected behind actors on a screen in a studio, to create
the illusion that they are on location.
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Stop-motion animation: technique in which a miniature
puppet is moved incrementally through a range of motions
and photographed one frame at a time with each movement.
When the filmed scene is run at the conventional film speed
of 24 frames per second, the illusion that the creature is
moving is created. King Kong, animated by Willis O’Brien,
is an acclaimed example of the technique.
Substitution shot: trick shot in which the camera is
stopped and the actors freeze while an object or actor is
exchanged for another. In The Execution of Mary Queen of
Scots, the actors froze while a dummy was substituted for
the actress just as the ax is poised to fall; the camera
was then re-started to capture the “beheading.”
Trick (also trick shot or gag):
a special effect
Visual effects (also called optical or photographic
effects): special effects achieved with the aid of
photographic or digital technology, occurring after the
principal photography, or main shooting, of a film.
Includes miniatures, optical and digital effects, matte
paintings, stop-motion animation, and computer-generated
imagery (CGI).
Appendix D:
Famous Names in Optics (not a complete list)
Alhazen (965-1040) - Born in Iraq as Abu Ali Hasan Ibn alHaitham, the great Arab physicist is more often known by
the Latinized version of his first name, Alhazen. The
efforts of Alhazen resulted in over one hundred works, the
most famous of which was “Kitab-al-Manadhirn”, rendered
into Latin in the Middle Ages. The translation of the book
on optics exerted a great influence upon the science of the
western world, most notably on the work of Roger Bacon and
Johannes Kepler. A significant observation in the work
contradicted the beliefs of many great scientists, such as
Ptolemy and Euclid. Alhazen correctly proposed that the
eyes passively receive light reflected from objects, rather
than emanating light rays themselves.
Sir George Biddell Airy (1801-1892) - Sir George Airy was a
distinguished nineteenth century English Astronomer Royal
who carried out optical research and first drew attention
to the visual defect of astigmatism. Airy manufactured the
first correcting eyeglasses (1825) using a cylindrical lens
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design that is still in use. The diffraction disks that
bear his name (Airy Disks) were discovered in the spherical
center of a wavefront traveling through a circular
aperture. These diffraction patterns form the smallest
unit that comprises an image, thus determining the limits
of optical resolution.
Dominique-François-Jean Arago (1786-1853) - In 1811, Arago,
in collaboration with Augustin-Jean Fresnel, discovered
that two beams of light polarized in perpendicular
directions do not interfere, eventually resulting in the
development of a transverse theory of light waves. Arago
was also instrumental in the success and funding of LouisJacques-Mandé Daguerre’s photographic process, known as the
daguerreotype, and directed studies that directly led to
the discovery of the location of Neptune by Urbain-JeanJoseph Le Verrier.
Jacques Babinet (1794-1872) - Jacques Babinet was a French
physicist, mathematician, and astronomer born in Lusignan,
who is most famous for his contributions to optics. Among
Babinet’s accomplishments is the 1827 standardization of
the Angstrom unit for measuring light using the red cadmium
line’s wavelength, and the principle (bearing his name)
that similar diffraction patterns are produced by two
complementary screens.
Roger Bacon (1214-1294) - Roger Bacon was an English
scholastic philosopher who was also considered a scientist
because he insisted on observing things for himself instead
of depending on what other people had written. Bacon’s
writings included treatises on optics (then called
perspective), mathematics, chemistry, arithmetic,
astronomy, the tides, and the reformation of the calendar.
His skill in the use of optical and mechanical instruments
caused him to be regarded by many as a sorcerer. Bacon was
acquainted with the properties of mirrors, knew the powers
of steam and gunpowder, had a working knowledge in
microscopy, and possessed an instrument very much like a
modern telescope.
Friedrich Johann Karl Becke (1855-1931) - Friedrich Johann
Karl Becke was an Austrian geologist, mineralogist and
petrologist from the University of Prague, who developed a
method for determining the relationship between light
refraction and refractive index differences observed in
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microscopic specimens. The phenomenon, which is now
referred to as the formation of Becke lines, has been named
for him.
Max Berek (1886-1949) - Max Berek was a German physicist
and mathematician, associated with the firm of E. Leitz,
who designed a wide spectrum of optical instruments, in
particular for polarized light microscopy and several
innovative camera lenses. Professor Berek is credited as
the inventor of the Leica camera lens system at their
Wetzlar factory.
Neils Bohr (1885-1962) - Building on Ernest Rutherford’s
work on the nucleus, Bohr developed a new theory of the
atom, which he completed in 1913. The work proposed that
electrons travel only in certain orbits and that any atom
could exist only in a discrete set of stable states. Bohr
further held that the outer orbits, which could hold more
electrons than the inner ones, determine the atom’s
chemical properties and conjectured that atoms emit light
radiation when an electron jumps from an outer orbit to an
inner one.
Although Bohr’s theory was initially viewed with
skepticism, it earned him the Nobel Prize in physics in
1922 and was eventually expanded by other physicists into
quantum mechanics.
William Henry Bragg (1862-1942) - Sir William Henry Bragg
was a noted British physicist and President of the Royal
Society who had numerous research interests, but the work
that earned him a rank as one the great leaders in science
was his historic advancements in X-ray crystallography.
Working with his son William Lawrence Bragg, he developed a
method of bombarding single crystals with high-energy Xrays emitted by specially constructed vacuum tubes.
By examining the pattern of X-rays diffracted by various
crystals, Bragg and his son were able to establish some
fundamental mathematical relationships between an atomic
crystal structure and its diffraction pattern. For this
achievement, William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg
were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1915.
Sir David Brewster (1781-1868) - Sir David Brewster was a
Scottish physicist who invented the kaleidoscope, made
major improvements to the stereoscope, and discovered the
217
polarization phenomenon of light reflected at specific
angles. In his studies on polarized light, Brewster
discovered that when light strikes a reflective surface at
a certain angle (now known as Brewster’s Angle), the light
reflected from that surface is plane-polarized. He
elucidated a simple relationship between the incident angle
of the light beam and the refractive index of the
reflecting material.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) - Albert Einstein was one of
the greatest and most famous scientific minds of the 20th
century. The eminent physicist is best remembered for his
theories of relativity, as well as his revolutionary notion
concerning the nature of light. However, his innovative
ideas were often misunderstood and he was frequently
ridiculed for his vocal involvement in politics and social
issues.
The birth of the Manhattan Project yielded an inexorable
connection between Einstein’s name and the atomic age.
However, Einstein did not take part in any of the atomic
research, instead preferring to concentrate on ways that
the use of bombs might be avoided in the future, such as
the formation of a world government.
Euclid (325-265 BC) - Though often overshadowed by his
mathematical reputation, Euclid is a central figure in the
history of optics. He wrote an in-depth study of the
phenomenon of visible light in Optica, the earliest
surviving treatise concerning optics and light in the
western world. Within the work, Euclid maintains the
Platonic tradition that vision is caused by rays that
emanate from the eye, but also offers an analysis of the
eye’s perception of distant objects and defines the laws of
reflection of light from smooth surfaces.
Optica was considered to be of particular importance to
astronomy and was often included as part of a compendium of
early Greek works in the field. Translated into Latin by a
number of writers during the medieval period, the work
gained renewed relevance in the fifteenth century when it
underpinned the principles of linear perspective.
Armand Fizeau (1819-1896) - Armand Fizeau is best known for
being the first to develop a reliable experimental method
of determining the speed of light on the Earth. Previously,
the speed of light was measured based upon astronomical
218
phenomena. Fizeau also conducted experiments that
demonstrated that the velocity of light is a constant,
regardless of the motion of the medium it is passing
through.
It was previously established that light traveled at
different rates through different mediums, but prior to
Fizeau’s discovery, it was believed that if the medium was
in motion, the velocity of the speed of light would be
increased by the movement of the medium.
Jean-Bernard-Leon Foucault (1819-1868) - Jean-Bernard-Leon
Foucault was a French physicist who is considered one of
the most versatile experimentalists of the nineteenth
century. Together with the French physicist Armand Fizeau,
Foucault developed a way to measure the speed of light with
extreme accuracy. He also proved independently that the
speed of light in air is greater than it is in water.
Foucault’s other contributions to the field of optics
included a method of measuring the curvature of telescope
mirrors, an improved technique to silver astronomical
mirrors, a method of testing telescope mirrors for surface
defects, and the invention of a polarizing prism to analyze
polarized light.
Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788-1827) - Augustin-Jean Fresnel,
was a nineteenth century French physicist, who is best
known for the invention of unique compound lenses designed
to produce parallel beams of light, which are still used
widely in lighthouses. In the field of optics, Fresnel
derived formulas to explain reflection, diffraction,
interference, refraction, double refraction, and the
polarization of light reflected from a transparent
substance.
John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871) - John Herschel
was the only child of renowned scientist and astronomer
William Herschel. In 1820, the younger Herschel was one of
the founding members of the Royal Astronomical Society, and
when his father died in 1822 he carried on with the elder
Herschel’s work, making a detailed study of double stars.
In collaboration with James South Herschel compiled a
catalog of observations that was published in 1824. The
work garnered the pair the Gold Medal from the Royal
Astronomical Society and the Lalande Prize from the Paris
Academy of Sciences.
219
In 1839, Herschel developed a technique for creating
photographs on sensitized paper, independently of William
Fox Talbot, but did not attempt to commercialize the
process. However, he published several papers on
photographic processes and was the first to utilize the
terms positive and negative in reference to photography.
Particularly important to the future of science, in 1845
Herschel reported the first observation of the fluorescence
of a quinine solution in sunlight.
William Herschel (1738-1822) - Friedrich William Herschel
was an eighteenth century German astronomer who is credited
with the discovery of the planet Uranus. In addition,
Herschel measured the heights of about one hundred
mountains on the moon, carefully recorded the data, and
prepared papers that were presented to the Royal Society of
London. In the late 1700s, he began to build and sell
telescopes. The high quality of Herschel’s optics was soon
widely known outside of England, and he utilized them to
publish three catalogues containing data on 2500 heavenly
objects, including the sixth and seventh moons of Saturn,
Enceladus and Mimas. Herschel continued making
observations and cataloging his discoveries until his death
in 1822 at age 84.
Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) - Christiaan Huygens was a
brilliant Dutch mathematician, physicist, and astronomer
who lived during the seventeenth century, a period
sometimes referred to as the Scientific Revolution.
Huygens, a particularly gifted scientist, is best known for
his work on the theories of centrifugal force, the wave
theory of light, and the pendulum clock. His theories
neatly explained the laws of refraction, diffraction,
interference, and reflection. Huygens went on to make
major advances in the theories concerning the phenomena of
double refraction (birefringence) and polarization of
light.
Shinya Inoué (1921-Present) - Shinya Inoué is a
microscopist, cell biologist, and educator who has been
described as the grandfather of modern light microscopy.
The pioneering microscopist heavily influenced the study of
cell dynamics during the 1980s through his developments in
video-enhanced contrast microscopy (VEC), which is a
modification of the traditional form of differential
interference contrast (DIC) microscopy. Inoué also made
220
significant contributions to the investigation of
biological systems with polarized light microscopy. His
seminal work, “Video Microscopy,” was published in 1986,
and a second revised and updated edition, co-authored with
Kenneth Spring, followed in 1997. The book is a cornerstone
of microscopical knowledge and is highly regarded
throughout the scientific community.
Alexander Jablonski (1898-1980) - Born in the Ukraine in
1898, Alexander Jablonski is best known as the father of
fluorescence spectroscopy. Jablonski’s primary scientific
interest was the polarization of photoluminescence in
solutions, and in order to explain experimental evidence
gained in the field, he differentiated the transition
moments between absorption and emission. His work resulted
in his introduction of what is now known as a Jablonski
Energy Diagram, a tool that can be used to explain the
kinetics and spectra of fluorescence, phosphorescence, and
delayed fluorescence.
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) - Johannes Kepler was a
sixteenth century German astronomer and student of optics
who first delineated many theories of modern optics. In
1609, he published “Astronomia Nova” delineating his
discoveries, which are now called Kepler’s first two laws
of planetary motion. This work established Kepler as the
“father of modern science”, documenting how, for the first
time, a scientist dealt with a multitude of imperfect data
to arrive at a fundamental law of nature.
John Kerr (1824-1907) - John Kerr was a Scottish physicist
who discovered the electro-optic effect that bears his name
and invented the Kerr cell. Pulses of light can be
controlled so quickly with a modern Kerr cell that the
devices are often used as high-speed shutter systems for
photography and are sometimes alternately known as Kerr
electro-optical shutters. In addition, Kerr cells have
been used to measure the speed of light, are incorporated
in some lasers, and are becoming increasingly common in
telecommunications devices.
Edwin Herbert Land (1909-1991) - The founder of the
Polaroid Corporation, Edwin Herbert Land was an American
inventor and researcher who dedicated his entire adult life
to the study of polarized light, photography and color
vision. Perhaps Land’s most famous contribution to
science, however, was his development of instant
221
photography.
The invention was inspired by his three-year old daughter
when she asked him why she could not instantly see a
picture he had just taken of her on vacation. The one-step
dry photographic process took Land three years to perfect,
but his success was phenomenal.
Theodore Harold Maiman (1927-Present) - Theodore Maiman is
best remembered for constructing the world’s first laser, a
device that has transcended the field of optics to find a
diversity of applications in the modern world. In May of
1960, Maiman built his prototype laser using a synthetic
ruby rod silvered at both ends to reflect light.
Small enough to be held in the palm of the hand, when the
atoms in the rod were excited by an intense beam of light
from a xenon lamp, a release of energy was initiated and an
internal chain reaction occurred that caused the energy to
bounce back and forth within the rod. When the energy built
up to a certain level, it escaped from one end of the ruby
rod to form an intense beam of monochromatic light centered
at 694.3 nanometers.
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) - James Clerk Maxwell was
one of the greatest scientists of the nineteenth century.
He is best known for the formulation of the theory of
electromagnetism and in making the connection between light
and electromagnetic waves. He also made significant
contributions in the areas of physics, mathematics,
astronomy and engineering. He considered by many as the
father of modern physics.
Albert Michelson (1852-1931) - Albert Abraham Michelson, a
Polish-American physicist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Physics in 1907. He is best known for his experiments in
which he proved that the hypothetical medium of light, the
“ether”, did not exist, and his many attempts at accurately
measuring the speed of light. Michelson is also well known
for developing a means to more accurately measure the speed
of light and the size of stars.
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) - Sir Isaac Newton, who was
ironically born the same year that Galileo died, is
popularly known as one of history’s greatest scientists.
Many of his discoveries and theories in the areas of light,
color, and optics form the basis for current scientific
thought in these disciplines. In addition to his extensive
222
work in optics, Newton is perhaps best known for his theory
of universal gravitation. He also is considered one of the
inventors of calculus along with German mathematician
Gottfried Leibniz. Newton’s three laws of motion are
considered basic to any physics student’s education.
Max Planck (1858-1947) - Max Planck, a German physicist, is
best known as the originator of the quantum theory of
energy for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1918.
His work contributed significantly to the understanding of
atomic and subatomic processes. Planck made significant
contributions to science throughout his life. He is
recognized for his successful work in a variety of fields
including, thermodynamics, optics, statistical mechanics,
and physical chemistry.
Lord Rayleigh (John William Strutt) - (1842-1919) - Lord
Rayleigh was a British physicist and mathematician who
worked in many disciplines including electromagnetics,
physical optics, and sound wave theory. The criteria he
defined still act as the limits of resolution of a
diffraction-limited optical instrument. Rayleigh wrote
over 446 scientific papers, but is perhaps best known for
his discovery of the inert gas argon, which earned him a
Nobel Prize.
Ole Christensen Roemer (1644-1710) - Roemer’s greatest
achievement was the first relatively accurate measurement
of the speed of light, a feat he accomplished in 1676. At
the Royal Observatory in England, Roemer’s studies of
Jupiter’s moon Io and its frequent eclipses enabled him to
predict the periodicity of an eclipse period for the moon.
By applying the relatively inaccurate calculations for the
distances between Earth and Jupiter available during the
seventeenth century, Roemer was able to approximate the
speed of light to be 137,000 miles (or 220,000 kilometers)
per second.
Henri Hureau de Sénarmont (1808-1862) - Sénarmont was a
professor of mineralogy and director of studies at the
École des Mines in Paris, especially distinguished for his
research on polarization and his studies on the artificial
formation of minerals. He also contributed to the
Geological Survey of France by preparing geological maps
and essays. Perhaps the most significant contribution made
by de Sénarmont to optics was the polarized light
retardation compensator bearing his name (still widely
223
utilized today).
Willebrord Snell (1580-1626) - Willebrord Snell was an
early seventeenth century Dutch mathematician who is best
known for determining that transparent materials have
different indices of refraction depending upon the
composition. Snell discovered that a beam of light would
bend as it enters a block of glass, and that the angle of
bending was dependent upon the incident angle of the light
beam.
Light traveling in a straight line into the glass will not
bend but, at an angle, the light is bent to a degree
proportional to the angle of inclination. In 1621, Snell
found a characteristic ratio between the angle of incidence
and the angle of refraction. Snell’s law demonstrates that
every substance has a specific bending ratio-the
“refractive index. The greater the angle of refraction,
the higher the refractive index for a substance.
George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903) - Throughout his career,
George Stokes emphasized the importance of experimentation
and problem solving, rather than focusing solely on pure
mathematics. His practical approach served him well and he
made important advances in several fields, most notably
hydrodynamics and optics. Stokes coined the term
fluorescence, discovered that fluorescence can be induced
in certain substances by stimulation with ultraviolet
light, and formulated Stokes Law in 1852.
Sometimes referred to as Stokes shift, the law holds that
the wavelength of fluorescent light is always greater than
the wavelength of the exciting light. An advocate of the
wave theory of light, Stokes was one of the prominent
nineteenth century scientists that believed in the concept
of an ether permeating space, which he supposed was
necessary for light waves to travel.
Samuel Tolansky (1907-1973) - Born in Newcastle upon Tyne,
England as Samuel Turlausky, Tolansky performed a
significant amount of his research and developed the
interference contrast microscopy technique that bears his
name. Other research interests of Tolansky included the
analysis of spectra to investigate nuclear spin and the
study of optical illusions. Although he was primarily
concerned with the spectrum of mercury, during World War II
Tolansky was asked to ascertain the spin of uranium-235,
224
the isotope capable of fission in a nuclear chain reaction.
Thomas Young (1773-1829) - Thomas Young was an English
physician and a physicist who was responsible for many
important theories and discoveries in optics and in human
anatomy. His best known work is the wave theory of
interference. Young was also responsible for postulating
how the receptors in the eye perceive colors. He is
credited, along with Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von
Helmholtz, for developing the Young-Helmholtz trichromatic
theory.
225
Appendix E:
Websites
HowStuffWorks.com
How OLEDs Work
http://science.howstuffworks.com/oled.htm
How Digital Cinema Works
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/digital-cinema.htm
How does a Star Wars lightsaber Work
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/question171.htm
How Illustration Works
http://people.howstuffworks.com/illustration.htm
How IMAX Works
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/imax.htm
How Plasma Displays Work
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/plasma-display.htm
How Cable Television Works
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cable-tv.htm
How Satellite TV Works
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/satellite-tv.htm
How RACEf/x Works
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/racefx.htm
How Digital TV Works
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/dtv.htm
How Blue Screens Work
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/blue-screen.htm
How Steadicams Work
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/steadicam.htm
How Nuclear Medicine Works
http://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-medicine.htm
How CAT Scans Work
http://science.howstuffworks.com/cat-scan.htm
226
How MRI Works
http://science.howstuffworks.com/mri.htm
How X-rays Work
http://science.howstuffworks.com/x-ray.htm
How Photographic Film Works
http://science.howstuffworks.com/film.htm
How Telescopes Work
http://science.howstuffworks.com/telescope.htm
How Paparazzi Work
http://people.howstuffworks.com/paparazzi.htm
How Light Works
http://science.howstuffworks.com/light.htm
How Digital Cameras Work
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/digital-camera.htm
Computer Graphics
A Critical History of Computer Graphics and Animation
http://accad.osu.edu/~waynec/history/lessons.html
A Critical History of Computer Graphics and Animation Section 14: CGI in the movies
http://accad.osu.edu/~waynec/history/lesson14.html
A Critical History of Computer Graphics and Animation Section 17: Virtual Reality
http://accad.osu.edu/~waynec/history/lesson17.html
A Critical History of Computer Graphics and Animation Section 18: Scientific Visualization
http://accad.osu.edu/~waynec/history/lesson18.html
CGI Historical Timeline
http://accad.osu.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html
Silicon Graphics
http://www.sgi.com/
Adobe
http://www.adobe.com/
227
Optics
Electromagnetic Spectrum
science.nasa.gov/newhome/help/glossary.htm
Nanoworld Magnification Series
http://www.uq.edu.au/nanoworld/bact1.html
Science at NASA
http://science.nasa.gov/default.htm
GlobalSecurity.org
http://www.globalsecurity.org/index.html
An Overview of Electronic Surveillance:
History and Current Status
http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/crisis/D.txt
FBI Has Long History of Surveillance
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,71011,00.html
Spyequipmentguide.com
http://www.spyequipmentguide.com/video-surveillance.html
Optics.org
http://optics.org/
Drawing with Optical Instruments
Devices and Concepts of Visuality and Representation
http://vision.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/vision_coll/home
Lasers-Optics-USA
http://members.aol.com/WSRNet/laser.htm
Molecular Expressions Images from the Microscope
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/index.html
Secret Worlds: The Universe Within
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powe
rsof10/
(Secret Worlds: The Universe Within, found at Molecular
Expressions website, deserves special mention. Featured is
an animated graphic that takes the viewer from Outerspace
to the Atom.
From the website:
228
View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the
Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in
successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak
tree just outside the buildings of the National High
Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After
that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a
microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell
nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic
universe of electrons and protons.
An Anecdotal History of Optics from Aristophanes to Zernike
http://www.ee.umd.edu/~taylor/optics.htm
Optics/Photonics Web Resources
http://people.deas.harvard.edu/~jones/ap216/pages/web_resou
rces.html
Media History Project
http://www.mediahistory.umn.edu/photo.html
Electromagnetic Spectrum
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/emspectru
m.html
National Institute of Standards and Technology
http://www.nist.gov/
Telescopes from the Ground Up
http://amazingspace.stsci.edu/resources/explorations/groundup/
http://amazingspace.stsci.edu/resources/explorations/groundup/lesson/basi
cs/index.php
History of Astronomy: Topics: Instruments
http://www.astro.unibonn.de/~pbrosche/hist_astr/ha_items_instrum.html
Silicon Graphics
http://www.sgi.com/
A carbon nanotube page
http://www.personal.rdg.ac.uk/~scsharip/tubes.htm
Molecular Expressions Photo Gallery
229
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/micro/gallery.html
Nanotechnology - Graphics
http://www.aip.org/png/cat9.html
Nanotechnology Gallery
http://ipt.arc.nasa.gov/gallery.html
Micromachines Movie Gallery
http://www.sandia.gov/mstc/technologies/micromachines/movie
s/index.html
Nanomedicine Art Gallery
http://www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine/Gallery/othernano.php
Nanotechnology Team
Image Gallery
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/Groups/SciTech/nano/images/images.h
tml
How Light Works
http://science.howstuffworks.com/light.htm
An Atlas of Cyberspaces
http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/web_sites.html
Zazzle - Space Exploration Gallery
http://www.zazzle.com/collections/products/gallery/browse_r
esults.asp?cid=238537123735733010
NASA
http://www.nasa.gov/home/
How Contact Lenses Work
http://health.howstuffworks.com/contact-lens1.htm
Space.com
http://www.space.com/
Spitzer Space Telescope
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer/
Spectrum Online
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jan06/inthisissue
Scanning Tunneling Microscope
230
http://www.research.ibm.com/topics/popups/serious/nano/html
/stm.html
Large Telescopes around the World
http://www.starshine.com/frankn/astronomy/proscope.asp
NCSA’s Multimedia Online Expo, “Science for the
Millennium.”
http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/Expo/main.html
Galileo Project
http://galileo.rice.edu/index.html
Google Earth
http://earth.google.com/
Near-field Scanning Optical Microscopy (NSOM)
http://physics.nist.gov/Divisions/Div844/facilities/nsom/ns
om.html
Imago Scientific Instruments
http://www.imago.com/imago/
Tiny Wonderland of Electron Microscope Is Revealed at
Exhibition
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/record/archives/vol21/vol21_iss6
/record2106.28.html
Bio-Nano Robotics
http://bionano.rutgers.edu/mru.html
Photonics
www.intel.com/technology/silicon/sp/glossary.htm
FPMicro.com
www.fpmicro.com/resources/glossary.htm
VoiceandData.com
www.voiceanddata.com.au/vd/admin/glossary.asp
Wordnet - Princeton
www.wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Silicon Photonics - Intel
http://www.intel.com/technology/silicon/sp/
231
Optics/Photonics Web Resources
http://people.deas.harvard.edu/~jones/ap216/pages/web_resou
rces.html
Silicon Photonics Glossary
http://www.intel.com/technology/silicon/sp/glossary.htm
Hollywood and Film
Panavision
http://www.panavision.com/index.php
American Cinematographer - Cameras in Cinematic History
http://www.theasc.com/clubhouse/inside/beg.htm
Timeline of Influential Milestones and Important Turning
Points in Film History
http://www.filmsite.org/milestonespre1900s.html
Cinema: How Are Hollywood Films Made?
http://www.learner.org/exhibits/cinema/screenwriting.html
Cinematography
http://www.cinematography.com/
Explore Hollywood Blvd.
http://www.historicla.com/hollywood/map.html
Filmmaking Online Resources
http://www.actioncutprint.com/film-fl.html
Hollywood
http://www.hollywood.com/
Silicon Graphics
http://www.sgi.com/
Hollywood, Los Angeles, California
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood
Internet Public Library - Film Making
http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/ent50.20.00/
Money, Change and the History of Hollywood
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=423670
2
232
Pixar Animation Studios
http://www.pixar.com/index.html
American Cinema
http://www.learner.org/resources/series67.html?pop=yes&vodi
d=283116&pid=206
Scene 1 Enter Future Filmmaker
http://library.thinkquest.org/29285/index.html
American Film Institute Screen Education Center
http://afi.edu/default.aspx
AFI’s 100 YEARS...100 MOVIES
http://www.afi.com/tvevents/100years/movies.aspx
Industrial, Light and Magic
http://www.ilm.com/
Inventing Entertainment
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edhome.html
PBS - Special Effects: Titanic and Beyond
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/specialfx2/
Stan Winston
http://www.stanwinston.com/home2.html
Film and Video Magazine
www.filmandvideomagazine.com October | 2001
Scientific Visualization, Modeling and Simulation
Whatever happened to ... Virtual Reality?
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/21jun_vr.htm
Computer simulation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_simulation
Silicon Graphics
http://www.sgi.com/
Air War College - Wargames, Simulations & Exercises
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-sims.htm
Virtual Reality:
History
233
http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/VETopLevels/VR.History
.html
The Winter Simulation Conference:
The Premier Forum on Simulation Practice and Theory
http://www.wintersim.org/article.htm#intro
Photography
A History of Photography from its beginnings till the 1920s
http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/
American Photography Museum
http://www.photography-museum.com/
History of Photography Timeline
http://www.photo.net/history/timeline
Photo.net
http://www.photo.net/
Photographer Nicephore Niepce - History of Photography Point de Vue du Gras
http://www.niepce.com/home-us.html
Digital Cameras/Digital Images: Pixels, Resolution,
Formats
http://swehsc.pharmacy.arizona.edu/exppath/micro/digimagein
tro.html
Astrology
An Introduction to the History of Astrology
http://www.nickcampion.com/nc/history/intro.htm
History of Astrology
http://www.astrologers.com/html/history.html
Art
Timeline of Art History
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/splash.htm
The History of Art Virtual Library
http://www.chart.ac.uk/vlib/
234
TV
Historical Periods in Television Technology
http://www.fcc.gov/omd/history/tv/
Television History - The First 75 Years
http://www.tvhistory.tv/
Historical Periods in Television Technology
http://www.fcc.gov/omd/history/tv/
Dreams
Quantitative Study of Dreams
http://psych.ucsc.edu/dreams/