REGIMENTED LIGHT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21979, 25 March 1946, Page 4

REGIMENTED LIGHT

REMARKABLE BRILLIANCE AID IN OPTICAL RESEARCH A new device called “regimented light,” which was demonstrated in New York on March 9, producing microscopic points of light equal to onesixteenth of the sun’s brilliance, is expected to be of very great aid in optical research and photography, reports a correspondent of The Times of London. It is claimed that this device is already capable of achieving brilliances of fully one-half that of the sun, and some day may fully rival the sun’s brilliance. Some of its earliest uses are expected to give much improved definition in projected cinematograph pictures, and a far greater clarity in enlargements from photographic films than has ever been attained before. In the demonstration the other day the generator was no larger than the radio tube used in the average home receiver. The light it produced came from a crater of molten metal only three one-thousandths of an inch in diameter, but it was a light of 65,000 candles a square inch —10 times as brilliant as that from a tungsten filament incandescent lamp. All other light sources are limited by the meltingpoint of the wire or other material employed in them, but in this device greater light is obtained by allowing the metal —zirconium is employed—to melt. The light is called “regimented” because the rays, being exactly parallel, require no focusing. The device was developed by two engineers of ihe Western Union Telegraph Company. Mr. W. D. Buckingham and Mr. C. R. Deibert, who carried on their project during the war under a grant by the National Defence Research Committee,