INFRA-RED CAMERA

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 5, 8 January 1944, Page 6

INFRA-RED CAMERA

"INVENTED IN 1935"

CLAIM BY SYDNEY MAN

OC. SYDNEY, January 4. Mr. Thomas McGowan, a Sydney aircraft technician, claims that he had submitted to Australian military authorities, in 1935, the idea for the infra-red television camera which is reported to have enabled ; the bombing of Berlin recently despite thick cloud. "In 1935, I had a cinema camera with a film sensitised to infra-red ray, and with an apparatus behind it which developed the film with a time lag of 10 seconds." said Mr. McGowan. "At the time I intended that the camera should be used in aeroplanes to prevent them running into mountain tops in cloudy flying conditions, and to enable naval men to see through smoke screens. I experimented successfully with ordinary plates, penetrating the dense carbon content of smoke at the railway marshalling yards at Redfem. "After writing to the then Minister of Defence (Sir Archdale Parkhill), 1 received a letter to present myself at a military engineers' depot, where I interviewed the secretary of the Inventions Board (Colonel .Whitfield) and a representative from Victoria Barracks. I outlined the details of the new camera, and told them I had not patented the idea as I desired to give it to the military. At a later interview Colonel Whitfield said the details had been forwarded to Melbourne, and might possibly be sent to London. Meanwhile, I have not recevied further advice, so imagine my surprise when I read in the papers that an infra-red television camera had been used in the bombing of Berlin."