As is often the case, I get a few minutes as the weekend starts to look at all those neat articles I didn’t delete during the week, hoping I would get to all of them on the weekend. Here is this week’s favorite because it not only nicely summarizes a looming impediment to my ability to optimize lenses (after all, what else could be important?), but it also gives some of those really great high-level numbers that give you a perspective on how real the described problem is. The title of this blog entry is inspired by the fire that I lit to enjoy the contrast between the lake effect snow falling 4 feet away to the left and cozy fire 4 feet in front of me (is glass a wonderful thing or what?).
The article, “Future of computers – Part 2: The Power Wall,” is from one of the more reliable places for articles of this type, EDN. It describes what has been creeping into the news more often: that computers are coming to a place where you simply cannot gang any more together for the time being, as the power and heat really does become overwhelming.
Now, I do want you to go to the link, but to help encourage this behavior (it will only extend this experience by 3 minutes) I will give a summary of the some of the highlights. In the opening, the author, Russell Fish, compares the current state of computing speed on the big super computers with steam boat racing in the 1800s – nice touch. Digression: in 1846, Bates (of Bates and Wallace, where Wallace is the nemesis of Darwin by all accounts) is in Manaus, Brazil, many hundreds of miles up the Amazon, when he decides he needs to go to the grocery store. He states this in his book (which is GREAT if you can find a copy). What’s sad is this entry is made in December 1846 (I may be off a bit on the date, too lazy to go look), and the next entry, since he does not write about his trip to the grocery store, is in April 1848. It takes him 15 months to get down the river and back up (the second leg being the tricky one). As he pulls in from his trek, the first steam ship appears in Manaus, accomplishing the same trip in 3 weeks.
I think we have a challenge here, which points to a dramatic change in high-end computing in the next decade. If you have a chance, read some of the comments at the end of the article. There are a couple of good ones, including the person who points out the steamship caption slightly misnames the boat in question (which apparently blew up in its attempt to win).
Now, click the link below. It is worthwhile reading.
This is worth pausing on – yet another event on the timeline to smaller and faster. The folks at MIT, who appear to be the US answer to the Fraunhofer Institute, report in the New York Times today yet another step in making things faster.
We all know that the eye responds at a rate such that 30 frames per second (fps) or, better yet, 60 fps is indistinguishable from continuous to us. Electronic cameras of course do not have the limits of the eye (I once developed a system to operate at 3,000 fps). MIT operates in a different space than mere mortals and they have recently completed a somewhat faster camera at -- wait for it (but not too long) --
500 fpns = 500,000,000,000 fps
Now, why that number? A useful unit to carry around these days might be the speed of light, something that is difficult to make relevant, but here is an attempt. Light does not travel at 3x10^8 m/sec (it does, but who can relate), it travels at 1 foot/nanosecond. Those feet and inches just don’t go away. We can relate to the foot, but what about the nanosecond? Can we relate? Let’s try. When we’re in our car, we often go 60 mph, or, as you often learn in physics, 88 fps (as in feet per second). OK, now let’s think about the smallest unit of length we can visualize. Clearly we can see 1 mm on a ruler, so let’s make 0.1mm as the smallest thing we can see. Also, most of us get on a plane every now and then and go not 60 mph, but 600 mph.
So what can we almost relate to? 600 mph is 880 feet per second (about a football field’s length), about 10,000 inches per second (12X) or 250,000 mm per second (25X), or 2,500,000 of the smallest unit you can visualize (100 microns) in a second. Perhaps the main point of this little exercise is that we aren’t even close; we are only halfway there in log space and who can think in log space? If you can, you’re halfway there! We have no way to relate to the speed of a camera that is framing faster enough to “see” light travel through a scene. So you’ll just have to watch MIT’s video and not relate.
Check out the New York Times article with link to MIT video before it goes away (sent to me by Doug Nutter):
SCIENCE | December 13, 2011 Speed of Light Lingers in Face of New Camera By JOHN MARKOFF M.I.T. researchers have built a camera that can take images at intervals of a trillionth of a second.
This new camera is yet another pillar in the roadmap of science making light relevant. The article opens with a reference to Edgerton, whom I assume all readers know. If not, you may want to look at his images from the 1950s (or 1930s, can’t remember – there are some neat flip books at museums of his photos and you can get some of his images from the used book list). Edgerton was the master of scientific strobe photography. Also, you must be aware of the epic perspective book, “Powers of Ten” (if not, Google “Powers of Ten” and act accordingly). This is one of the absolute best books for appreciating the spatial scale of things. Clearly we now need, and can produce, the Powers of Ten in the fourth dimension – can’t wait.
The latest issue of Information Display from the Society for Information Display (SID) has a couple of articles that are somewhat of a high-end Consumer Reports coverage of TVs, particularly plasma. I, for one, had formed the opinion that plasma TVs were off the map as a personal consumer. Apparently, even if that may have been right the last time I bought a TV (I don’t do this very often), it is clearly not a given now.
The takeaway from the articles (should you not be a member) is that plasmas are now less expensive than competing LCD units. The key selection criterion is whether you watch TV in an environment with high-ambient lighting – that is, a room with floor-to-ceiling windows where you are watching when the sun is not down (who has time). If that is the case, then the clear consensus is LCD. However, if you are more of an after-the-kids-go-to-bed TV watcher, then plasma is the clear winner. Also, if you happen to be one of the few that have gone 3D, plasma is a faster technology that is intrinsically better for 3D.
Another valuable item from this issue is they point to a particularly educated purveyor of TVs in Scarborough NY, with an Internet presence: Value Electronics.
There are additional articles on the status of the higher-tech stuff you may be interested in. I am not in the market this year (or am I?) but I thought this was a valuable issue that you might otherwise miss.
Three items crossed through the ether on the weekend, one is somewhat long awaited (if you consider 5 years long), one that continues the march to making everything look inspiring, and one that even itself is not sure what it is. The one in the middle is not even a thing, it is software.
Starting with what could either be revolutionizing digital photography (again) or go into the laser disc category (I actually acquired a laser disc player with my most recent house, although I don’t have a laser disc) – the gadget being name the Lytro. Since these guys are probably copyright sensitive at this point, simply typing the code name, “Lytro” into Google will give you an onslaught of sites. For those who have not been following this, this is the first implementation of what has come to be called “Lightfield Imaging”, discover, invented, or recognized by Prof. McVoy at Stanford and his student Ng. It was first presented to the science audience at IODC in 2006, of all places. Even then, the answers to questions were, “you’ll have to talk to my lawyer”. This technology records not just a projected spatial intensity maps (what we call a photograph) but this device also records the intensity as a function of direction. Conceptually, the net results being you’ve stored all the data in 3D so that you can decide what is in focus in your photo whenever you want. Now, one might say – then why bother me, just put everything in focus. But, the developers seem to think there are photographers out there that feel fuzzy is artistic and therefore have allowed you to make whatever you want fuzzy, or sharp. On the Google list, it was noted that until Oct. 12, you couldn’t buy one without a “reservation code”.
Also, on the list, was something I started to hear about earlier in the week, but, it showed up as a specific link from John Tamkin. The new thing is, in my mind, Super Photoshop. Apparently there are many who want to add things to their photos, that aren’t there (I don’t get it, but, I’m becoming old school I can see). In any case, the site below guides you through how you can now add furniture to rooms that are lacking (actually in my house it would be to add floor where there are currently piles of books).
And, to complete the weekend there is the somewhat older news of Looxcie. This is a tri focal length web cam you can wear on your ear – something I always wanted to do? Available today through SkyMall (I’ve been on a lot of airplanes this month).
The catch phrases are “see what you see”, hmmm, and “catch those unexpected moments” – that can go few places. So, now you’re caught up. I’m not sure, yet, if you missed anything, we’ll see.
PS: Even before we could launch this out the door, yet another “photo toy” appeared on the web that many have enjoyed. Spotted by our web-watcher, Mark Kahan, this is the “ball camera” Quite fun too. 1 minute and 41 seconds – you can do it J
This note was brought to my attention by Mark Kahan, as are many things. I must admit, after Jurassic Park one does occasionally consider what would the world be like if the dinosaurs had not decided to exit. It’s one thing to occasionally encounter a grizzly, or a whale, but a tyrannosaurus? Instead of Tornado reports, we could have dino-reports, seems like the outcomes might be similar.
Fortunately, we digress. But, apparently someone has way too much time on their hands and they have been trying to work back in time to find which asteroid careened out of orbit after an interaction with another object. They succeeded; in finding one asteroid that did not do that. Enough said. Considering they just launched this thing, I guess this is a pressing question. Read on.
Spacecraft casts doubt on alleged culprit for dinosaur extinction
Observations from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission indicate the family of asteroids some believed was responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs is not likely the culprit, keeping the case open on one of Earth's greatest mysteries.
While scientists are confident a large asteroid crashed into Earth approximately 65 million years ago, leading to the extinction of dinosaurs and some other lifeforms on our planet, they do not know exactly where the asteroid came from or how it made its way to Earth. A 2007 study using visible-light data from ground-based telescopes first suggested the remnant of a huge asteroid, known as Baptistina, as a possible suspect.
According to that theory, Baptistina crashed into another asteroid in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter about 160 million years ago. The collision sent shattered pieces as big as mountains flying. One of those pieces was believed to have impacted Earth, causing the dinosaurs' extinction.
Since this scenario was first proposed, evidence developed that the so-called Baptistina family of asteroids was not the responsible party. With the new infrared observations from WISE, astronomers say Baptistina may finally be ruled out.
"As a result of the WISE science team's investigation, the demise of the dinosaurs remains in the cold case files," said Lindley Johnson, program executive for the Near Earth Object (NEO) Observation Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The original calculations with visible light estimated the size and reflectivity of the Baptistina family members, leading to estimates of their age, but we now know those estimates were off. With infrared light, WISE was able to get a more accurate estimate, which throws the timing of the Baptistina theory into question."
WISE surveyed the entire celestial sky twice in infrared light from January 2010 to February 2011. The asteroid-hunting portion of the mission, called NEOWISE, used the data to catalogue more than 157,000 asteroids in the main belt and discovered more than 33,000 new ones.
Visible light reflects off an asteroid. Without knowing how reflective the surface of the asteroid is, it's hard to accurately establish size. Infrared observations allow a more accurate size estimate. They detect infrared light coming from the asteroid itself, which is related to the body's temperature and size. Once the size is known, the object's reflectivity can be re-calculated by combining infrared with visible-light data.
The NEOWISE team measured the reflectivity and the size of about 120,000 asteroids in the main belt, including 1,056 members of the Baptistina family. The scientists calculated the original parent Baptistina asteroid actually broke up closer to 80 million years ago, half as long as originally proposed.
This calculation was possible because the size and reflectivity of the asteroid family members indicate how much time would have been required to reach their current locations -- larger asteroids would not disperse in their orbits as fast as smaller ones. The results revealed a chunk of the original Baptistina asteroid needed to hit Earth in less time than previously believed, in just about 15 million years, to cause the extinction of the dinosaurs.
"This doesn't give the remnants from the collision very much time to move into a resonance spot, and get flung down to Earth 65 million years ago," said Amy Mainzer, a study co-author and the principal investigator of NEOWISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. Calif. "This process is thought to normally take many tens of millions of years." Resonances are areas in the main belt where gravity nudges from Jupiter and Saturn can act like a pinball machine to fling asteroids out of the main belt and into the region near Earth.
The asteroid family that produced the dinosaur-killing asteroid remains at large. Evidence that a 10-kilometer asteroid impacted Earth 65 million years ago includes a huge, crater-shaped structure in the Gulf of Mexico and rare minerals in the fossil record, which are common in meteorites but seldom found in Earth's crust. In addition to the Baptistina results, the NEOWISE study shows various main belt asteroid families have similar reflective properties. The team hopes to use NEOWISE data to disentangle families that overlap and trace their histories.
"We are working on creating an asteroid family tree of sorts," said Joseph Masiero, the lead author of the study. "We are starting to refine our picture of how the asteroids in the main belt smashed together and mixed up."
JPL manages and operated WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The spacecraft was put into hibernation mode after it scanned the entire sky twice, completing its main objectives. The principal investigator, astronomer Edward Wright, is at UCLA.
The mission was selected competitively under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan.
The spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
This is just in case you missed it. Over the weekend, the project that created Perkin-Elmer’s government division (near as I can tell, I worked there from 1980-1985) and led, I would imagine to the demise of Itek, was revealed in Washington. I had heard about the legends of “Big Bird”, the unclassified name for this program (for those that skipped this phase, many classified programs have unclassified names, they always have two words in them, so I’m told) for decades now. But, I must say, this thing is startlingly large. Phil Pressel, who has been leading the charge to declassify this mission, after CORONA’s declassification (Itek’s precursor to this) is someone I worked closely with at PE, on other programs. Phil has written a book and it is in the final stages of being approved for publication. You’ll be one of the first to know (and I’m counting on an autograph copy). So, if you haven’t seen this, read on –
PS – regarding actually seeing it, given that this was a short notice, one-day event that we all missed, if you can get into NRO, go, it is there, under a large tent I hear. If that doesn’t work for you (or me); next summer it is due to be unveiled for a 2-year run at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base museum in Dayton, OH. OK, that is the only reason to go to Dayton, OH, but, I will be there and I’ll post something to perhaps encourage you to do the same.
The massive KH-9 Hexagon spy satellite on display at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center, after being declassified on Sept. 17, 2011. Longer than a school bus at 60 feet in length and weighing 30,000 pounds at launch, 20 KH-9 Hexagons were launched by the National Reconnaissance Office between 1971 and 1986. CREDIT: Roger Guillemette/SPACE.com
CHANTILLY, Va. – Twenty-five years after their top-secret, Cold War-era missions ended, two clandestine American satellite programs were declassified Saturday (Sept. 17) with the unveiling of three of the United States' most closely guarded assets: the KH-7 GAMBIT, the KH-8 GAMBIT 3 and the KH-9 HEXAGON spy satellites.
The vintage National Reconnaissance Office satellites were displayed to the public Saturday in a one-day-only exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport, Va. The three spacecraft were the centerpiece of the NRO's invitation-only, 50th Anniversary Gala celebration held at the center last evening.
Secret satellites that reveal targets even in night is the claim of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) - as evidenced by this NRO patch. CREDIT: NRO
Saturday's spysat unveiling was attended by a number of jubilant NRO veterans who developed and refined the classified spacecraft and its components for decades in secret, finally able to show their wives and families what they actually did 'at the office' for so many years. Both of the newly declassified satellite systems, GAMBIT and HEXAGON, followed the U.S. military's frontrunner spy satellite system CORONA, which was declassified in 1995. [See photos of the declassified U.S. spy satellites]
This National Reconnaissance Office released graphic depicts the huge HEXAGON spy satellite, a Cold War era surveillance craft that flew reconnaissance missions from 1971 to 1986. The bus-size satellites weighed 30,000 pounds and were 60 feet long. CREDIT: NRO
Big spy satellites revealed
The KH-9 HEXAGON, often referred to by its popular nickname "Big Bird," lived up to its legendary expectations. As large as a school bus, the KH-9 HEXAGON carried 60 miles of high resolution photographic film for space surveillance missions.
Military space historian Dwayne A. Day was exuberant after his first look at the KH-9 HEXAGON.
"This was some bad-ass technology," Day told SPACE.com. "The Russians didn't have anything like it."
Day, co-editor of "Eye in the Sky: The Story of the CoronaSpy Satellites," noted that "it took the Soviets on average five to 10 years to catch up during the Cold War, and in many cases they never really matched American capabilities."
Phil Pressel, designer of the HEXAGON's panoramic 'optical bar' imaging cameras, agreed with Day's assessment.
"This is still the most complicated system we've ever put into orbit …Period."
The HEXAGON's twin optical bar panoramic mirror cameras rotated as the swept back and forth as the satellite flew over Earth, a process that intelligence officials referred to as "mowing the lawn."
Phil Pressel, one of the developers of the KH-9 Hexagon's panoramic camera system, proudly points out some of the spacecraft's once highly-classified features, a life's work that he had been unable to discuss publicly until the NRO's Sept. 17, 2011 declassification of the massive spy satellite. CREDIT: Roger Guillemette/SPACE.com
Each 6-inch wide frame of HEXAGON film capturing a wide swath of terrain covering 370 nautical miles — the distance from Cincinnati to Washington — on each pass over the former Soviet Union and China. The satellites had a resolution of about 2 to 3 feet (0.6 to nearly 1 meter), according to the NRO. [10 Ways the Government Watches You]
According to documents released by the NRO, each HEXAGON satellite mission lasted about 124 days, with the satellite launching four film return capsules that could send its photos back to Earth. An aircraft would catch the return capsule in mid-air by snagging its parachute following the canister's re-entry.
In a fascinating footnote, the film bucket from the first KH-9 HEXAGON sank to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in spring 1972 after Air Force recovery aircraft failed to snag the bucket's parachute.
The film inside the protective bucket reported contained high resolution photographs of the Soviet Union's submarine bases and missile silos. In a daredevil feat of clandestine ingenuity, the U.S. Navy's Deep Submergence Vehicle Trieste II succeeded in grasping the bucket from a depth of 3 miles below the ocean.
Hubble vs. HEXAGON
Former International Space Station flight controller Rob Landis, now technical manager in the advanced projects office at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, drove more than three hours to see the veil lifted from these legendary spacecraft.
Landis, who also worked on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope program, noticed some distinct similarities between Hubble and the huge KH-9 HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite.
"I see a lot of Hubble heritage in this spacecraft, most notably in terms of spacecraft size," Landis said. "Once the space shuttle design was settled upon, the design of Hubble — at the time it was called the Large Space Telescope — was set upon. I can imagine that there may have been a convergence or confluence of the designs. The Hubble’s primary mirror is 2.4 meters [7.9 feet] in diameter and the spacecraft is 14 feet in diameter. Both vehicles (KH-9 and Hubble) would fit into the shuttle's cargo bay lengthwise, the KH-9 being longer than Hubble [60 feet]; both would also fit on a Titan-class launch vehicle."
The 'convergence or confluence' theory was confirmed later in the day by a former spacecraft designer, who declined to be named but is familiar with both programs, who confided unequivocally: "The space shuttle's payload bay was sized to accommodate the KH-9."
The NRO launched 20 KH-9 HEXAGON satellites from California's Vandenberg AFB from June 1971 to April 1986.
The HEXAGON's final launch in April 1986 — just months after the space shuttle Challenger explosion — also met with disaster as the spy satellite's Titan 34D booster erupted into a massive fireball just seconds after liftoff, crippling the NRO's orbital reconnaissance capabilities for many months.
A side view of a KH-7 GAMBIT spy satellite on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport, Va., on Sept. 17, 2011. CREDIT: Roger Guillemette/SPACE.com
The spy satellite GAMBIT
Before the first HEXAGON spy satellite systems ever launched, the NRO's GAMBIT series of reconnaissance craft flew several space missions aimed at providing surveillance over specific targets around the world.
The satellite program's initial system, GAMBIT 1, first launched in 1963 carrying a KH-7 camera system that included a "77-inch focal length camera for providing specific information on scientific and technical capabilities that threatened the nation," according to an NRO description. A second GAMBIT satellite system, which first launched aboard GAMBIT 3 in 1966, included a175-inch focal length camera. [Related:Anatomy of a Spy Satellite]
The GAMBIT 1 series satellite has a resolution similar to the HEXAGON series, about 2 to 3 feet, but the follow-up GAMBIT 3 system had an improved resolution of better than 2 feet, NRO documents reveal.
The GAMBIT satellite program was active from July 1963 to April 1984. Both satellites were huge and launched out of Vandenberg Air Force Base.
The satellite series' initial version was 15 feet (4.5 m) long and 5 feet (1.5 m) wide, and weighed about 1,154 pounds (523 kilograms). The GAMBIT 3 satellite was the same width but longer, stretching nearly 29 feet (9 m) long, not counting its Agena D rocket upper stage. It weighed about 4,130 pounds (1,873 kg).
Unlike the follow-up HEXAGON satellites, the GAMBIT series were designed for extremely short missions.
The GAMBIT 1 craft had an average mission life of about 6 1/2 days. A total of 38 missions were launched, though 10 of them were deemed failures, according to NRO documents.
The GAMBIT 3 series satellites had missions that averaged about 31 days. In all, 54 of the satellites were launched, with four failures recorded.
Like the CORONA and HEXAGON programs, the GAMBIT series of satellites returned their film to Earth in re-entry capsules that were then snatched up by recovery aircraft. GAMBIT 1 carried about 3,000 feet (914 meters) of film, while GAMBIT 3 was packed with 12,241 feet (3,731 meters) of film, NRO records show.
The behemoth HEXAGON was launched with 60 miles (320,000 feet) of film!
This image shows the flight profile for the NRO's GAMBIT 3 spy satellite missions between 1966 and 1984. The program was declassified in Sept. 2011. CREDIT: NRO
HEXAGON and GAMBIT 3 team up
During a media briefing, NRO officials confirmed to SPACE.com that the KH-8 GAMBIT 3 and KH-9 HEXAGON were later operated in tandem, teaming-up to photograph areas of military significance in both the former Soviet Union and China.
The KH-9 would image a wide swath of terrain, later scrutinized by imagery analysts on the ground for so-called ‘targets of opportunity.' Once these potential targets were identified, a KH-8 would then be maneuvered to photograph the location in much higher resolution.
"During the era of these satellites — the GAMBIT and the HEXAGON — there was a Director of Central Intelligence committee known as the 'Committee on Imagery Requirements and Exploitation' that was responsible for that type of planning," confirmed the NRO's Robert McDonald, Director of the Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance.
NASA's Rob Landis was both blunt and philosophical in his emotions over the declassification of the GAMBIT and HEXAGON programs.
"You have to give credit to leaders like President Eisenhower who had the vision to initiatereconnaissance spacecraft, beginning with the CORONA and Discoverer programs," Landis said. "He was of the generation who wanted no more surprises, no more Pearl Harbors."
"Frankly, I think that GAMBIT and HEXAGON helped prevent World War III."
Editor's note: This story was updated on Sept. 19 to correct the name of Phil Pressel, who designed the HEXAGON spy satellite camera system.
As we approach 20 years of the Hubble Space Telescope, the subject of why it broke and how it was fixed continues as a favorite topic on the lecture circuit. Recently, I was invited to a panel discussion with the broad topic of quality in engineering – in this case software, at DVCon in San Jose. The audience of a few hundred was there to discuss methods for identifying and maintaining software quality. When I was invited, I pointed out I know none of the industry acronyms, but, the organizers were undeterred. Joining me on the panel were a series of what I would call working Vice President’s, meaning they rose up through the ranks as an engineer, as I have. This made for an excellent mix and perspective relative to the interests of the audience, which from my vantage point appeared to be those with 5-10 years in the “working” world.
The event was entirely unscripted, other than the moderator having a backup set of prompting questions initially to get the audience engaged and later to step up the pace should audience interest start to lag. Now, I am not historically a fan of panels and rarely attend a panel discussion format event. To mention an exception, the yearly Emerging Technology panel at MIT has consistently brought together the best of the best in a forum where they speak candidly on topics that are relevant. I highly recommend this event.
Now, it seems that between the five of us on the panel, plus the moderator, we established a synergy that emulates the standards I experienced with the MIT panel and a rapport with the audience that encouraged and achieved a true group event. The audience engaged quickly and asked challenging questions, to which the moderator orchestrated our responses to keep them terse, relevant, and engaging. The questions represented their real challenges in understanding their real environment. What was rewarding was, it did seem that we at the front really had “been there and done that” and could offer the questionee a perspective that did cause them, as well as many in the audience, to pause and move ahead in their understanding of the environment that surrounds them on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
I was encouraged to use the Hubble 1st Servicing Mission story (never to be called a “repair” mission) as a context for any comments I might be inclined to make. As a result, I established early on the evolving theme, which I initiated at the University of Rochester two years ago and at SPIE Annual last summer, that the days of engineering of any flavor in the ideal world needs to be put away. Working engineers, especially the evolving generation, need to think and act defensively. Specifically, while your contribution will of course be perfect, the environment which your contribution will be placed in will be flawed in a many, many ways. The Hubble primary mirror being an excellent case history, but it is one of so many, that I have to conclude this is a pervasive flaw in our model of the world of engineering as a whole.
Of course, hindsight, as “they” are known to say, “is 20-20”. (A digression – if you are an American born and raised engineer, working in America, it is worth realizing that many, if not most of these colloquial expressions are truly meaningless and quite disorienting to the majority of the audience, who are not in the category described above). So, rather than dwelling on the mistakes of the past, what can be applied to the future. In my case, I have directly managed, (usually 1:1 with another PhD in my field and on my staff) over 2,000 projects for over 500 companies. In addition, I was on the Hubble repair team (but by luck, not the Hubble “breaking” team) and I have in my background other experiences that are even more expensive than the Hubble repair. From this I of taken the following insights into being a substantial contributor in complex technical environments.
First, of course, you do all of the basics, obsessively.
A) You communicate the parameters that govern the problem you are working on (Table 1 in optical design/engineering speak) in writing, with every external communication.
B) You determine your assumptions, ESPECIALLY in today’s science, your most basic assumptions. Does 2+2=4 (not necessarily).
C) You find two independent ways to check a calculation, preferably with completely different tools
But, and here is what is new, you do not have the luxury to do everything twice (and we are assuming the business model is not the one where it was recognized that repairing a failure, even one you caused, can be a valid source of substantial revenue).
Where do you focus your attention?
You focus on what is the project doing for the first time. A consistent failure path is where the new aspect of the project changes an assumption that has held for all time, until the day the project starts, and, you did not “think” about. I have example after example after example after example … (you probably get the point).
I give a one hour lecture with some of these examples, and, perhaps I’ll bring some to this to blog space, in the future.
In the meantime, I hear they have posted the entire panel discussion on the Internet, not that I have checked it out.
I am more than happy to propagate this conversation, should anyone have insights or great stories to add. Also, if you have a local society or other forum, and this sounds like an interesting talk, I enjoy speaking on this topic, and I seem to be somewhat global these days.
(No optics in this one, but, you still might enjoy it)
Traveling, especially abroad always brings new perspectives on the world. I knew I was in trouble when on my first trip out of North America I failed at my first mission; get coffee. Now, you’d think, traveling to New Zealand would not present a communication challenge. But, literally the first thing I tried to do, failed. There was a counter, with assorted pastries and behind it, coffee! How hard could this be, even after a 14 hour flight? The person behind the counter was not the problem. I stared intently at the target, coffee, and said, “I’d like a coffee to go”. She stared back, a little less intently, but, initiated no action. Come on, I’m still in the airport, those were English words, weren’t they? Hmmm, try again, “I’d like a coffee to go”. Nothing. Try pointing and gesturing – try frantically – no response. OK, step back; watch how the natives do it. What is the culturally proper phrase? “I’d like coffee to take away”. Immediate delivery. Ever since I’ve figured it was hopeless to travel to a country that is not some version of English based. Even if you do manage a few phrases of the language, you do not know the culture.
So, what brought this on today? We’ll, we’re in Europe, France, with a native speaker (good thing). But, this morning, a phrase comes across in the e-mail referring to blarney, a somewhat arcane phrase, but I believe fairly ubiquitous in the US, but, apparently not in France. But, now we have the Internet. Not only do you get the definition of blarney, a few contexts to use it in, but, you get the story of Cormac MacDermot McCarthy a castle owner in the 16th century who acquired this reputation for talking his way through things (like how not to have your castle co-opted by the resident monarch). How cool is that, and I didn’t even need 3D. The website is built to attract tourists to Ireland, big business. Hence, a pretty unique website. Check it out.
We did spend 10 weeks working from the University of Galway 2 summers ago invited by the now OSA president, Prof. Chris Dainty (OK, I snuck optics in). Learned some culture – mussels are best eaten with significant amounts of Guinness. But, that would be another story.
Back to the point. It is impressive how rapidly the Internet has become populate with things like the above. It is increasingly valuable, as the local environment globalizes, particularly the US universities. Our son is spending the summer in South Korea. Why? He thought it would be good to learn Korean – figured 3-weeks would do it. It is a new generation. So while he will learn something of one culture first hand, there are many more to go and until he can get there, there is the Internet.
I’m in at the University Bordeaux this week learning about their research in virtual and augmented reality, where I was invited to ArcheoVision. This is a museum of archeology that is experimenting with the use of virtual reality combined with robotic replication based on high technology laser scanning to creative an environment that will attract, educate, and entertain the public without compromising the science of archeology, including monster (15 foot) reproduction marble statues (very cool – you can even order your own - $30,000). They also offer to scan your head in 3D and make an accurate marble bust, for, you know what, only $2,999 (actually very cool too, we’re considering it).
We met with Prof. Robert Vernieux, an archeologist’s archeologist who spent nearly 15 years in Egypt. He is now involved in many things, one being creating 3-D environments for the general public. There are a few paths. In one case, they have created a 3-D image file of ancient objects, which are then projected in a small theater environment, with some reasonable quality projectors. In this way, otherwise small perhaps nondescript objects can become a center of attention. Rather than lying up on the screen, 15 feet away, the 3D projection can effectively place it in your hand as a sharp, clear, fascinating image. When combined with the lecture that places the piece in context, for a scientist at least, it definitely keeps you awake. The second series we saw was a projection of antique amateur stereo postcards. What has happened is Prof. Vernieux came upon a collection at a market in Egypt and brought them back to France where they are scanned and interfaced to the auditorium projectors. Again for me at least, these were fascinating and I think I could have easily watched them for an hour. Based on the success of the stereo postcards he found, from 1868 and 1903, of ruins in Egypt being excavated by archeologists, the center has advertised that they are accepting donations of stereo postcards from Egypt. They have been sent thousands that they are now scanning. But, the public is not coming in droves. The place is rather quiet.
Now, to the point. A group of scientists then gathered for a few hours to discuss whether 3D is viable. It is not clear. It is currently a technology that is extremely data intensive and often overwhelmingly time consuming. The consensus is the 3D technology is currently somewhat of a toy, that pretty much everyone enjoys, for about 10 minutes, and then they say, “is that all there is?”, the answer often being – yes.
An interesting observation, after designing a 3D “Cave” experience for the museum; everyone remembers the Cave, the delivery of the 3D technology, and no one remembers the archeology. This is not the goal.
So, as always, this is just a random musing, but, it will be interesting to see if 3-D becomes a standard technology in the next decade, or, goes the way of the laser disc player (which I happened to inherit with the house I recently bought – I have a great player, but, no discs – may have to do something about that).
Should you speak French (I don’t), you might enjoy,
Last week found me at, among other things, the NASA SBIR conference on mirror manufacturing. The main attraction being the last day visit to the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) to see what can be seen of the integration and test of the mirrors and the instruments (NIRCAM, NIRSPEC, MIRI, and FGS). There is encouraging news. It does appear that most of the hardware now exists for both the telescope and the instruments. Each of the instruments arrived at GSFC during this year and they are in some phase of initial testing. GSFC is the facility where the thermal and vibration testing will occur as well as integration and testing.
At the conference, Glatzel (yes, the son of the optical designer who inspired Juan Rayces optical design algorithm, found in Eikonal) reported that Tinsley (the L3/SSG version, not the ZYGO/ASML version) has delivered the last of the mirrors and yes, they are defining the state-of-the-art. The numbers are not yet packaged for public dissemination, but, they are impressive.
Now, what about that title? I have no idea how many of you know that the number of seconds in a year is conveniently close to the number π x 107 (365x24x60x60=31,536,000), something that was pointed out to me back in undergraduate days. So, although it did “feel” like the JWST is moving out of the one challenge after another (which can be fun, but expensive) phase and into the relatively routine. This probably not quite the case, but, the project does appear to have moved to an important to phase. Below is a shot of one of the spare segments in a GSFC clean room (a really big one, as are most of the facilities at Goddard.
A spare segment from the JWST.
Following the center tour, Joe Howard, working with the host Phil Stahl and Peter Blake arranged for the group to see the “Science Sphere”. This is pretty fun. It is a suspended sphere, about 4-5 ft in diameter that forms for the screen for 4-6 projectors that are nicely integrated. Perhaps most impressive, the projectors can be fed by real-time data. There is the weather, including for example the worldwide weather in the summer of hurricanes, including, of course, Katrina. But, the most compelling was to watch the air traffic world-wide, in real-time – fascinating (and then we had to catch the airplane). One of the colorful earth resource images (somewhat fuzzy due to the lighting and motion) is below. If you get near the GSFC visitor center, be sure to arrange to see The Sphere.
An image from “The Science Sphere” at the GSFC Visitor Center.
I was at Laser Munich last week, again. And, again, it seemed that Europe is continuing to emerge as a hotbed for optics. Laser Munich makes other similar conferences in the U.S. look, to be generous, anemic. I consider this good; it seems to be reinvigorating the field (at least for us classical optics types). I only made it to half of the exhibits and 1/5 of the posters, but, in that I saw many things of interest. As always, things seem to be going towards faster (femto is becoming atto), smaller (nano is almost a standard), and more complex (freeform is everywhere, even if we cannot measure it).
The Synopsys spread at Laser Munich. There was a definitive “race for the top” (e.g. ceiling), which it appears that we won. A nice touch came at the end of the day when some key vendors, including Melles Griot, conveniently next door, would bring in cases of German beer and one evening a vendor even brought bratwurst for dinner (perhaps unfortunately for them, I never figured out who the vendor was, unless it was the conference itself).
There were two major technical conferences of interest to me (this is where EOS, SPIE, and OSA all sponsor technical conferences). The first was the EOS conference on Manufacturing of Components in combination with the SPIE conference on Metrology. Here, some of the latest thinking in how to manufacture and measure (still unsolved) freeform surfaces was at the center of the discussion.
The other conference was, as was the case two years ago, the OSA/SPIE conference on OCT (optical coherence tomography). This year was as excellent as the last, with one of the fastest overviews of 20 years of technology I’ve ever seen, presented by Prof. Drexler and an excellent tutorial by the founder of the field, Prof. Fujimoto. To me, this is one of the most interesting cases of combining a shopping list of the courses that are taught in graduate school and from that emerges a technology. It uses interferometry (white light Michelson), exotic sources (femto lasers, super continuum, super luminous diodes (I wonder what will be the adjective after “super”, ultra perhaps? – we’ll see), high resolution spectrometers, Fourier transforms, and a lot of tricks, developed over 20 years to create, recently, images of layers under the skin.
While OCT is aimed at axial (1-D) resolution for application to the eye, OCM (optical coherence Microscopy) is directed at collecting images in 3D of cells under the skin. The University of Rochester is the first to develop subcelluar 3D microscopy, biopsy level images in a configuration that can move to the clinic. The latest image, acquired last week in the latest configuration, is shown below. This technology has one of the fastest growth curves ever seen and demonstrates that exponential growth in technology is continuing to sprout up all around us. In optometry, the first clinical use was 2002, and since then it has grown to approaching 10 million procedures, at $48/each. This would make a nice topic for Harvard Business Review. One of the UofR recent images, which represents the state of the art, is included below, courtesy of Prof. Jannick Rolland, the Brian Thompson Chair Professor of Optical Engineering at the Institute of Optics. These images are created through the application of optical engineering to advance complex ideas in science, an ongoing theme.
No scalpel was involved in acquiring these images of cellular structure under the skin. Article currently posted in pending publication in Optics Letters.
has an outstanding article on how one individual contributor can compromise a complex operation; a topic that is rising in visibility. This was a topic for the recent panel discussion at DV-CON and will be a topic at the upcoming DAC conference in San Diego, where I am speaking at a Monday evening event, sponsored by Synopsys.
I have not followed or had an interest in hacking, or security, or the Sony problem, but, it has had enough press that I did click on the link when it appeared this morning. The article is interesting as a look inside of the science of hacking, but, it elevated to a Blog topic when I came to the “lessons learned” paragraph, which is an excellent statement of the theme of some of my own latest talks.
To pique you interest enough to go to the article by Mike Borza, I have extracted the lessons learned. If you go to the article via the link, you will find the rest of the story, which I recommend if you have an addition 3-4 minutes (it’s worth it, really).
The following is extracted from the link above, written by
Author Information
Mike Borza is founder and chief technology officer of embedded security specialist Elliptic Technologies Inc. He was also a founder and chief technology officer of network security appliances company Startle Networks. At Chrysalis-ITS (now Safenet), he worked with customers of the Luna series of network security processors as director of applications engineering. Earlier in his career, he was involved in biometric identity management systems design, safety-critical systems engineering, and optoelectronics design and manufacturing. Borza was a founding director of business networking forum The Ottawa Network. He has been an active contributor to the Security Task Group of IEEE 802.1 and was an editor of the 802.1AR Secure Device Identifier standard
“Lessons learned”
“What teachings can come from the PS3 hack? Certainly, many detailed issues allowed the attackers to peel successive layers off the PS3 security onion; these are important in their own right. But the bigger issue is that systems' security architecture and design are frequently undertaken at the very end of development, sometimes as an afterthought and sometimes simply resulting from scheduling issues, as the development of primary system functionality moves toward the product release date. This reality leaves security system development insufficiently resourced and reviewed, in the context of the value it is intended to protect for the whole system. This decision is a mistake. If a system is worth protecting, it is worth protecting well. Some ideas to consider:
Protect those things that need protection. This statement is not meant to be trite; identification of the assets to be protected is an important first step in developing a plan to protect them. From the outset, the PS3 was marketed as much more than a game console; part of what was sold to people was the ability to run another operating system. This decision required a security subsystem that met the needs of the gaming and media ecosystems, restricting access to content and services when the PS3 was running its factory OS. Limiting protection to this objective likely would have been much easier to achieve than retroactively trying to limit what versions of system code could run on the platform. In effect, the security objectives were changed after the fact to protect against what in reality was a non-threat. The result was an attack that succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations.
Be realistic in assessing the threats you face. The more interesting or valuable your platform or the market for it, the greater the interest will be in trying to compromise it. This reality may translate into large-scale efforts to break the security system. Ensure that security analysis and subsequent design receive a level of attention in proportion to the value of the information you are trying to protect. And don't underestimate the level of effort that an eventual attack may bring.
Plan for failure. This statement sounds defeatist, but it's not. If your system is valuable enough to attract a serious attack, your adversary may discover a vulnerability that enables a break for a period of time. Allowing for the possibility that you may need to repair and upgrade the security system over time is prudent planning. Designing in controlled amounts of flexibility to allow for changes that may need to be made later is a good future-proofing strategy, provided that it is carefully implemented. In retrospect, the misuse of a shallow signing key hierarchy that divulged the root signing key on the PS3 was a bad idea. Using it in a way that it could not be replaced was an even worse idea.
Know what you know, and know what you don't know. Many products use their security systems to protect valuable assets, which are generally unrelated to security. The PS3 is fundamentally a special-purpose multimedia entertainment system (and a very good one at that), which has been at the center of a much larger ecosystem of content and programming suppliers. The security system was supposed to protect that ecosystem, but an apparent lack of competence in its design and implementation left it vulnerable and ultimately surmounted. Designing security systems is a specialized undertaking, and many companies do not have the necessary in-house expertise. In such situations, it is well worth engaging a security specialist to help with this particular task. If the same care and thought had gone into the PS3's security system as went into the consumer features, the console likely would not have been breached so completely. Independent scrutiny and review by experts may have helped avoid this outcome. “
It is important, better yet essential; to take these bullet headers and apply them to any project you are involved in. From my experience my message has been bullet point #3, “plan for failure”. If you make it to the Synopsys session at DAC, you can hear more on this philosophy and strategy, in the context of the Hubble Space Telescope, along with some inspiring pictures from the universe.
The Optifab conference is happening this week in Rochester (May 11 -13). One of the highlights will be a panel discussion on the Q-type (Forbes) Polynomial Surface, which I am moderating in the Empire Hall from 2-3pm on Wednesday, May 12.
Two years ago was the first Optifab conference that I attended in Rochester. The event of note that year, at least for me, was the attachment developed for the QED aspheric stitching interferometer (ASI), which was the motivation for the Forbes polynomial. Note that in this informal setting, I am retaining the “Forbes” label on the polynomial; out in the optics community, there is a move away from this personalized reference to a new, yet-to-be-fully-adopted standard. Synopsys has selected “Q-type” polynomials as the identifier in their recent, full release of the polynomial in CODE V. (Along with the implementation of the polynomial, including painless converters to and from the power series representation, Tom Kuper has developed and implemented a guidance tool for CODE V called Asphere Expert, which indicates where to best place an asphere in an optical system.)
The QED ASI attachment is a very clever solution for aspheric testing. It includes an adjustable refractive wedge that is a plano-concave lens, plus a matching convex-plano lens that provides a spherical seat in which the two components rotate to create a wedge. On my list is to develop a nodal aberration description of how it works.
In the intervening two years, the Forbes polynomial has matured and entered the mainstream tool set. However, as with everything new, the transition is slow. The panel forum at Optifab is intended to motivate a discussion of where we are at this point in time. There are stories from the street that, at least by the time they reach me, are positive to very positive. At the same time, the Forbes polynomial implementation has, in the short view, increased the time per cycle in optimization. However, I will argue that if one steps back to look at the time cycle of an entire project, the key metric – the time spent to achieve predicted as-built performance – is in fact reduced. My argument is based on a lengthy, very realistic study of a high NA lithography lens conducted by Bin Ma, PhD, in conjunction with Prof. Rolland at the University of Rochester. Even more significant, for a given set of technology driven minimum limits, designs incorporating Forbes polynomials are achieving new levels of performance, when the slope constraints are used during optimization.
A key result is shown here, for the first time in public. The first chart provides the sensitivity to decenter of a 29-element lens with seven aspherics, created by Bin Ma based on a realistic optical design specification before the slope-constrained Forbes polynomial was available. The second chart shows the result for a lens developed with the slope-constrained Forbes. To achieve a factor of two and more improvement in this very mature technology is a compelling result.
Following the panel discussion, arrangements are being made to present and discuss the results of Bin Ma’s work at the Synopsys booth.
The sensitivity of a state-of-the-art 193nm high NA litho lens design developed a) without aspheric slope constraints and b) with Q(Forbes)-polynomials with slope constraints. (Preliminary data provided by Prof. Jannick Rolland and Bin Ma, to be published)
I had occasion to spend much of the week at OSA headquarters as a participant in Leadership Week, a pleasant event, where I was able to get ahold of Vol. 1‑3 of JOSA, which was in this case, bound into one volume covering January 1917 to the end of 1919. The American OSA (as opposed to the British OSA) was formed, as were many optical groupings outside of Germany including Imperial College in London and Institute Optique in France in response to WWI. In the U.S. it was 1929 when the Institute of Optics, in Rochester, where I am often found was formed. The rapid realization that Germany “owned” the production of not only optical instruments, but optical glass itself was a rude awakening for both Britain and the US, which I have written some on earlier. It parallels in some ways the current concern with rare earth metals, 95% of which come from one country. This was in fact the topic of an invited talk by a representative from the Dept. of Energy at this week’s OSA Leadership conference, but this is not the topic (see also the Feb. 14th article on the reopening (maybe) of the Mountain Pass Mine in California in Forbes). The point made at the talk is that the rare earth metals are not rare in the sense of being scarce, rather they are simply very diffuse and extracting them typically has significant environmental consequences. This is combined with the problem that they are very often collocated with thorium, which is radioactive. Net result, it is not that the resource is concentrated in one country, but rather that only one country has policies and economics that promote exploiting these resources. It was noted that while the House passed subsidies for the Mountain Pass Mine, the Senate did not. Returning however to the topic at hand, OSA.
The founding members of the Optical Society in 1918 double as editors of JOSA and were:
H. Kellner, associated with Bausch and Lomb, 609 St. Paul St., Rochester, NY
J.A. Anderson, Mt. Wilson
H.E. Ives, 1023 16th St. Washington DC
C.E.K. Mees, Kodak Park
W.B. Lancaster, 522 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, an ophthalmic MD.
F.E. Wright, 2134 Wyoming, Washington DC, a renaissance scientist affiliated with Carnegie
F.K. Richtmyer, Dept. Physics, Cornell, NY
P.G. Nutting, Westinghouse, Pittsburgh
J.P.C. Southall, Columbia University, NY
Looking at Google Scholar for this list demonstrates that many of them are true renaissance scientists, perhaps a common breed in that day. A nice example is in the extracted (partial) short article by Richtmyer in Science in 1931. Another area of published research from him involved UV radiation and flowers.
From Science, 1931 – using a Google Scholar link
J.A. Anderson is a little more difficult to locate due to the common last name, which overlaps a current particle physicist, but, Wikipedia provides an interesting entry for him,
John August Anderson (August 7, 1876 – December 2, 1959) was an American astronomer. He was born in Rollag, a small community in Clay County, Minnesota to the south of Hawley.
Anderson received his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in 1907, and remained on the staff after graduation. In 1908 he became professor of astronomy at the university. In 1909 he was also given the responsibility for the Rowland ruling engines that were used for creating diffraction gratings, and the quality of these was considered excellent, especially the concave gratings. He was married to a woman named Maria.
In 1916 he left to work at the Mt. Wilson observatory. He remained on the Mt. Wilson staff until 1956. His most notable contribution was his adaptation of the Michelson's interferometer technique for measuring close double stars. He used a rotating mask at the focus to measure the separation of Capella.
From 1928 until 1948 he was Executive Officer of the Caltech Observatory Council, working on the instrument and optical design of the main Palomar Observatory telescope. During this period he collaborated closely with George E. Hale and the Rockefeller Foundation.
He died in Altadena, California. The crater Anderson on the Moon is named in his memory.
He was awarded the Franklin Institute's Howard N. Potts Medal in 1924.
Unless otherwise noted, the following publications were by John A. Anderson.
"On the Application of the Laws of Refraction in Interpreting Solar Phenomena", Astrophysical Journal, vol. 31, 1910.
"A method of investigating the Stark effect for metals, with results for chromium", 1917.
"The vacuum spark spectrum of calcium", 1924.
"The Use of Long Focus Concave Gratings at Eclipses", Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Vol. 38, 1926.
J. A. Anderson and Russell W. Porter, "Ronchi's Method of Optical Testing", Astrophysical Journal, vol. 70, 1929.
"Spectral energy-distribution of the high-current vacuum tube", 1932.
"On the application of Michelson's interferometer method to the measurement of close double stars", Astrophysical Journal, vol. 51, June 1920.
"Optics of the 200-inch Hale Telescope", Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Vol. 60, 1948
P.G. Nutting was quite active in the 1920s in optics, but, 1930 finds this area of research for him,
DOI: 10.1306/3D932938-16B1-11D7-8645000102C1865D Physical Analysis of Oil Sands P. G. Nutting (2) AAPG Bulletin Volume 14 (1930)
Since the work on rock and grain densities by A. F. Melcher at the United States Geological Survey, described by him in 1920, various improvements and refinements have been introduced in the methods and apparatus used there. A new form of precision pycnometer and new methods are described, with a simple method of measuring permeability. Common sources of error and the interpretation of results are discussed in some detail.
He appears to have transitioned fields in about 1926. In 1914 he published an interesting Royal Society article on axial chromatic aberration of the eye (I am in a hotel and do not have the University level access I often have so I cannot show this one)
H.E Ives went on to file a color television patent (I don’t know how relevant it became)
A color TV patent filed in 1931 by H.E. Ives
In 1919, all members are listed with their addresses, which are a mix of residence and business. The address used by Kellner above appears many times and is probably a plant of Bausch of Lomb. There are 115 members, including the above, with the Boston Optical Co., Hardy & Co., Illinois, and Pinkham and Smith representing the corporate membership. There are a number of still familiar, and semi-familiar, but, nothing in the class of the then famous physicists of the time. Some of the names that I recognize include the likes of Edward Bausch and Adolph Lomb, Henry Crew (wrote an excellent history book), Crittenden at BS (not yet NBS) who wrote on aberration theory as did T. Smith at the National Physical Lab in England, who is also listed. As a digression, T. Smith is one of the most prolific authors of the period, particularly publishing in the coming years in JOSA, who had no specific lasting influence that I can see. Fabry is there from France, as is Hale from Mt Wilson (perhaps to become the most famous of those on the list). Among those who went on to form companies were Kollmorgen. Most heavily represented is the Bureau of Standards with 15; Coblentz, Crittenden, Curtis, Fairchild (to found Fairchild Camera, recently purchased by BAE?), Foote, Gibson, Karrer, Meggers, Mohler, Peters, Priest, Schultz, Tool, Valasek, and Weaver. Other common companies included Bausch and Lomb, Spencer Optical, Kodak, Nela Park (GE), Corning, American Optical (only C.H. Kerr and Tillyer), Keuffel & Esser, Westinghouse, Universities included Clark in MA, Cornell, MIT (Comstock), Northwestern, Yale, Ross State, PA, U. Michigan, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Harvard, Syracuse, and City College, NY, Barring the unlikely event that one of the Professors or one of the PhDs was a woman, there were no women. Under the likely assumption that all of the professors were PhDs, there were 67 of 112, versus today’s interesting figure that I picked up this week of 85% of over 16,000. One of the more interesting members, whom I recently gave a talk on, is Saegmuller, who has a very interesting family-written life story on the Internet that I stumbled on last year.
Each of the first three volumes contains sponsorship pages form Kodak, American Optical (founded in 1833), Warner and Swassey, and Bausch and Lomb. The initial issues lead with the byline “Devoted to Theoretical, Experimental, and Applied Optics”. The first article, by Richtmyer, an editor and Prof. at Cornell says basically that the many the professors at the 500 universities and colleges in the US that are only teaching need to start also performing research. He suggested that JOSA could contribute by compiling topics in need of research. In the first three volumes there are a number of articles trying to explain vision and how rods and cones actually may work and on film and color. By today’s standards, the articles border on simplistic. In the 4th article, the lead editor, Kellner (as in Kellner eyepiece, and also the nemesis of Saegmuller according to his life story) attempts to set up a set of symbol conventions for geometrical optics to as a solution to the problem already acknowledged that there is no standard for geometrical optics parameters. In retrospect, he failed, we still have absolutely no standards other than perhaps f is focal length. He also attempted a sign convention – which also failed. Many of the issues have a section on patents, a theme that reappears in Applied Optics in the 60s.
On p. 45 is a summary of the papers held at the first Annual Meeting in New York City on December 28, 1916. The meeting was held under the auspices of the A.A.A.S., who held their annual meeting on New Year’s Day typically (see the earlier blog on galaxies and Hubble). Paper topics included the design of specific four element lenses (typically), vision and the eye, and film; there were 13 in all, about ½ from society members and 4 from society founders. Many of the talks appear later as articles in JOSA.
Near the end of issue 2 of volume 1 there is a ½ page on “Optics Abroad” where the opening of Imperial College in London and the Institute Optique in France under Fabry is noted.
Issue 3 brings an unexpected article on how to ray trace to determine intensity distribution for the light emitted by an automobile headlight by O. E. Conklin – this is possibly the first treatment of this subject. It is nearly 20 pages and includes observations on the importance of a line filament. Conklin was with the Scientific Bureau of Bausch and Lomb. The last pages of Issue 3 provide a summary of a “Report of the Committee of Nomenclature and Standards of the IES”, which at least appears to in fact define many of the quantities and terminology that survives to today including radiance, irradiance, brightness, and 30 other terms including Lambert, Lumen, and Lux (see page 177-179 of Vol. 1).
Volume 2 opens with an article by Major F.E. Wright (founding member and editor) on the “War-Time Development of the Optical Industry”. This covers opinions and facts that I have written on previously based on reading this material in another forum from that time. It covers how the U.S. in particular scrambled to learn to manufacture glass and then field glasses over a 24 month period. This is followed by an article by Kollmorgen on protecting silvered mirror. At this time Kollmorgen was already involved in the manufacture of periscopes, their niche even today. The problem was the German’s no longer provided the high index turning prisms and without those there was to be no periscope. Kollmorgen set of to use front surface mirrors during the war and wrote of his work to develop a protecting coating, coming up with the idea of spinning the mirror while the protective lacquer layer dried.
Towards the end of issue 1 of vol. 2 one finds the Constitution of the OSA (p.46-47). To be a member, one needed to be “Any person who has, in the opinion of the Council (or at least 2/3rds of it), contribute materially to the advancement of optics.” At this point Adolph Lomb is treasurer. While local societies are mentioned in the bylaws, none are listed.
Volume 3 opens with a method of testing lenses proposed by Jewell, which I have seen earlier in a collection of the research publications of Kodak’s research lab of the period (available for download on the ORA website via the link to Kirtas). The concept was based in a radial line chart. An very nice photographic illustration is found on p. 57. This is followed by some useful data on old glass types and refractive index formula published by Nutting. T. Smith appears for the first of what was to be many, many times in Vol. 3, proposing what may have been a first proposal of a testing method that has evolved to become modern day MTF testing. The line pattern used today appears on page 78 of Vol. 3. Volume 3 closes with P.V. Wells writing a short piece on “The Future of the Optical Industry in the USA”. His points remain somewhat timeless. After pointing out that humans rely on sight for some of their more precise input, he then noted that nonetheless, there was no significant market for instrumentation that advanced precision measurement using light. As a result there are no economies of scale in manufacture and, to contribute to the field presents a need to overcome a substantial learning curve. This is followed by a paragraph explaining why Germany excelled in-spite of the odds, pointing to a problem with overpopulation driving resource demand couple with the “genius of the Zeiss-Abbe (and I’ll add Schott) partnership”. The author closes with a call for government funding for advanced research in optics, a call that continues to today. Witness the upcoming call to revisit the government review of the industry held at the National Academy of Science, where I spoke on the field of Optical Design back in 1996 and which resulted in the publication entitled “Harnessing Light” and perhaps more, but not that I could tell.
In all, the first three volumes are 345 pages, versus today’s page counts which exceed 20,000 per year for Optics Express alone. It was a different time.
In closing, last week, the book collection of Rudolph Kingslake (or a portion thereof) returned to the Optics Institute at the University of Rochester and with it volumes 4-20 of JOSA where it will be moved to a display with controlled access. My personal collection continues from there, so, I plan to continue this series from time to time going forward.
On a recent business trip to Toulouse, France, I had a few hours free one day, and I visited a space museum called Cité de l’Espace. This excellent museum has many indoor exhibits related to space exploration, the solar system, and astronomy. It also has a number of outdoor exhibits, most of which are life-size mockups of various spacecraft, including the Russian Mir space station and the gigantic Ariane 5 launch vehicle (53 meters tall). There is also a large-scale model of the solar system, which illustrates the correct relative sizes (but not distances) of the planets.
The only spacecraft model of a directly optical nature is the ESA XMM-Newton x-ray telescope (launched in 1999, still operational). A separate building houses a large-scale digital planetarium and an IMAX Theater, which was showing the film Hubble 3D. This is a beautiful film celebrating the history and the amazing imagery of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The film incorporates 3D IMAX footage that was shot by NASA astronauts on the final Hubble servicing mission (STS-125) in May 2009. The huge IMAX 3D camera was installed in the shuttle’s payload bay and positioned so it could film the space-walking astronauts as they worked on repairing the enormous HST, which had been captured and mounted on the repair platform in the rear of the payload bay.
The space walks were long, but the film clips had to be brief since they only had 8 minutes and 30 seconds of film installed. The 3D clips shot on the mission were combined with IMAX footage from previous service missions, as well as training footage and scenes of the astronauts inside the shuttle discussing the mission (and joking around). In addition, many of the astronomical images from HST were edited to show beautiful 3D effects that strongly demonstrate that these are indeed huge, 3D objects in space. The beautiful Hubble images really seem to come alive as you fly through nebulas and star nurseries and onto the very edge of the known universe.
(OK, today I’m distracted; see the origins of K-I-S-S at the bottom of this post.)
I attended the plenary session at OSA’s OFC/NFOEC conference in sunny San Diego this morning – I’m overlooking the harbor now. It has been at least five and perhaps even seven years since I was last here at OFC. As with most good plenary sessions, I came away with all sorts of trivia and even some perspective – where to begin?
I will save the distraction for a moment and see if I can fill out this post with facts of the past, present, and future as it relates to the rise of global and personal communications. Some of the numbers are staggering. I expect many readers were caught up in the frenzy of telecom and that many have not looked back since the crash. My recollections are that we designed our first WDM (wavelength division multiplexer) for a government research center in 1997, based on a large glass prism. Shortly thereafter, I found myself writing an 80-page proposal to the ATP program for a few million dollars to advance free-space optics modeling. In spite of having nearly no idea what I was writing about, as this was the early days, and the fact that I wrote the proposal alone in a hotel over a 60-hour sleepless stretch (haven’t done that again), we won. Following this, I had the clever idea that many people would be interested in glass prototype micro-optics, and so we bought an optics shop in the U.S. that made endoscopes. With that, we were on the train. I spent the next three years on the road (40 weeks a year) and yes, we even exhibited at OFC in 2001, I believe. Our engineering group saw our telecom design business grow from that first job in 1997 to 30% of our business at the time of the crash, in June 2001 as I recall. Well, that was then.
In touring the remains of the industry at the show today, I was telling my colleague that it’s like the telecom giants woke up one morning, looked around, and stepped on all the ants that were swarming around them. Today I heard three names consistently: Verizon, ATT (yes, they seem to be back), and Alcatel. And apparently JDSU is hiring. The displays are old and tired, there are a lot of empty spaces, and in general, I’d say the status quo prevailed into the end.
But here are some of the plenary numbers. When ARPAnet was invented in 1963, it connected UCLA, UCSB, Stanford, and the University of Utah. In 1969, as I’m entering high school, the first DNS was assigned. Today there are 500,000,000 of those (assuming DNS is a noun, I didn’t look up what it means). If that doesn’t work, that number is also attributed to the number of Internet nodes. In 1980, as I exited graduate school, there were 0 mobile phones. Today, there are 2,500,000,000 of those. I heard in the hall today, or was it yesterday, FLICKR (a photo upload site?, don’t know, haven’t been there, yet) had its 1,000,000,000th transfer, at the same time the current run rate is 1,000,000,000/year. Now that’s a growth rate. I don’t think they get $0.01, but, if they did….
An interesting plot showed that in the early 60’s the world had 2.3 billion people, and if I understood the plot, a significant percentage of them lived in “developed” countries. In 2013, there will still be about 2 billion people in the developed countries, and 6 billion in the developing countries. The growth rate for the developed countries is flat.
You’ve seen hockey stick growth projections. But have you ever seen it actually occur? I may get the units wrong here – in 1993, the Internet appears to the average techie, defining the start of data flow. By 2000, 6,200,000,000 GB of data is transferring per year, or per day/hour/minute/sec, not sure which. (Note: GB already has 9 zeroes). In 2011, we’re going to see a data rate of 1,800,000,000,000 GB. Now that is a hockey stick. Based on conservative projections, the data rate in 2020 will be in units of Petabits/sec (those come after Terabits, which come after Gigabits, or GB). According to the third speaker in the plenary session, if we don’t rethink the architecture before 2020 (that’s in 10 years), it will require the entire output of a nuclear power plant (a really big number of Kw) to drive the routers needed, based on current technology. No wonder the word energy efficiency comes up.
I do recall when I last paid attention, the Holy Grail was 100Gbit data rates. Many predicted it could not happen. But the big announcement (OK, maybe just a big announcement) was that a 100Gbit routing would be brought online this year. Apparently “coherent technology” has solved the challenge of transferring at these data rates without starting over. So now they’re talking of 100Gbit routing to small companies before I retire, and to my home shortly thereafter. So, what I think will be fun is reflected in a talk I heard in early 2000 by a telecom executive. He was having fun putting an early webcam on his dog, with a wireless unit, and then during the day turning it on to see where the doggie was. His thinking was, eventually (which appears to be soon), you enter a GPS coordinate somewhere in the world, and you are routed to the nearest webcam from which you can view life, live – sounds neat. I can imagine the end of travel, or will it be the beginning of armchair travel. Once you have your immersive, full surround 3-D TV, you sign up for the trip down the Amazon consisting of a live feed to a surround of cameras on a boat outfitted for the purpose – could be interesting.
OK, before exceeding the space here on this blog post, the distraction I referred to earlier. A speaker attributed the term Keep It Simple Stupid to one David S. Isenberg. So, who could resist, I Googled (a term still not in my spell checker). The answer is no, it was not him, but if you’re into telecom, you should check him out at www.isen.com. You will find there, at least today, the following interesting graphic.
It turns out the right answer is Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, 40 years with the Lockheed Skunk Works – courtesy of Wikipedia. Also worth a short visit if you’re a Skunk Works fan.
Although I tend to concentrate on events in science, this came by this morning, from a coworker at ORA who retired some years back, Barry Broome. This website, assembled by the magazine Slate, gives a very nice, very detailed, and reportedly unaltered, report that compiles the growth of unemployment for each county in the US by month since 2006. While the results are discouraging, and I’m sure there are more than a few ways to interpret them, what is impressive is that the data can now be compiled so quickly and displayed so effectively.
It is very instructive to active the “play” button and see the map evolve. If you have 2 minutes, check it out.
Note if you launch from here, I found you have to click a few times to activate it. I tried copying in a static map to increase your curiosity, but, I’m afraid you’ll actually have to click on the link.
