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Video cameras in 1976 needed a lot of light to operate. A conventional two-way mirror coating at 45% reflectance (normal) admits only 7% light through it, too little for a video camera’s vidicon tube to function properly. The MTDI coating at 45% reflectance allowed 45% light penetration, more than six times than that of a conventional semi-transparent mirror. In addition the coating was especially sensitive to the peak spectral sensivity of a vidicon tube, in that part of the visible spectrum it saw most adding even more transmission. Glass capsules internally coated appear totally opaque to an outside observer. Inside a potential wide array of invisible CCTV assemblies including sophisticated 360 degree pan/tilt/zoom assemblies were made available to the industry.
Slowly as the MTDI system and authorized private label systems. manufactured by Murray Tovi Designs, Inc., spread worldwide to banks, retail stores of every type, army installations, embassies, diamond exchanges, universities, resorts, factories, warehouses, casinos, meat packing plants, nursing homes, hospitals, train, air and bus terminals, civic centers, government complexes, malls, etc., it virtually replaced visible intimidating systems with a softer but deadlier system. One that would discriminate between the good and the bad without humiliation and intimidation of the innocent. As video cameras became more light sensitive the MTDI technology was no longer needed being replaced by other less sophisticated and cheaper discreet technologies. In a continuity from visible surveillance systems to discreet surveillance systems let us go now to the next generation conceived by Tovi Sciences, invisible surveillance systems.
The Tovi Sciences Invisible Surveillance System will be introduced late 200l or early 2002 in a pilot test installation (see Invisible Surveillance). It is intended to replace discreet surveillance systems as being far more effective in controlling and eliminating theft and far less obtrusive to innocents. This is the first time in my thirty year career that I will attack an edifice I built myself. It is a strange feeling. The system is based on a beam splitter developed in my laboratory (U.S. Patent No. 4,934,792) with potential applications in several industries. This fundamentally new type of two-way mirror, a laminate structure (see drawing) can reflect an actual three-dimensional image. The reflective layer has been removed from the surface then embedded in a parallel structure where it no longer has to be flat. It has several capabilities but which in this industry will be limited to one of it’s attributes, specifically it’s ability to reflect a totally realistic non-mirror ‘opaque’ graphic image such as a painting, graphic, photograph, silk-screen, etc., virtually indistinguishable from the original and without distortion in transmission (see-through).
In visible camera systems you see the direction of the camera and can avoid it to do something you are not supposed to do. In discreet sytems you do not know when the camera is pointing at you but you can see the capsule. By turning your back to the camera and capsule, you can do something you are not supposed to do, and avoid it. In the new system, interspersed with and indistinguishable from other paintings, photographs, posters, store signs, etc. you cannot tell which holds a sophisticated camera assembly behind it . Once you are made aware the system is present, which is intended in most applications, you will have no idea where it is except that it is there somewhere and may be watching you at this very moment and this essential condition should become the ultimate deterrent to theft, replacing discreet systems one at a time, not to mention that it will be the least intimidating to the innocent. Web Site Maintained & Hosted by Globalsites.net, Inc. |
(A synopsis)
