Photoinstrumentation

The scientific developments that have occured during the past decade indicate that advances in the field of photonics are moving repidly. The term photonics is now being used to describe the ever widening field of systems utilizing light particles or photons as part of the information gathering process. The original simple concept of an illuminated object being observed through a lens and camera system and recorded on photosensitive material is now a multifaceted system employing many different technologies. It is almost 150 years since Daguerre and Niepce made their faint copies of images on a copper plate washed with silver and fixed by exposing the plate to mercury fames. The first hundred years were devoted to film, mechanical, and optical improvements in the photographic process. Scientific photography was a small part of the overall photographic effort. Developments in equipment and techniques that changed over the period from about 1930 to 1970 and have made it possible to perform studies and to record information that, only a few years previously, were impossible to accomplish.

Print ISSN
Published
1980-05
Content type
Original Research
DOI
10.5594/J01607