OVERVIEW

This chapter contains rules relating to sensor systems and detectors operating in the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. This spectral slice has proven to be the technically easiest to implement (thanks to nature's gifts of phosphors for displays and silicon for detectors), has provided the easiest images to interpret (thanks to our Sun peaking in the visible wavelengths and humans evolving their only imaging sense in this spectrum), and has been able to address the largest market (again, thanks to human familiarity with imaging in this spectrum).

After still photography was developed and popularized in the nineteenth century, the idea of moving images was ignited in the minds of many scientists and engineers. While many worked on technology to produce moving photographic images (surprisingly still present in the modern cinema), some early pioneers realized that these moving images would reach a wider audience if electronically acquired and disseminated. Paul Nipkow developed a rotating-disk mechanically scanned television system as early as 1884, and the first CRT appeared as early as 1897.

Ever since the dawn of the first moving pictures, the desire to include sound with electro-optical images was paramount. By the time moving film pictures gained popularity, ex-Idaho potato farmer Philo Farnsworth was hot on the trail of all-electrical television while others were still trying to perfect mechanical television both with no market success. The world's first public demonstration of a television system (it was of a mechanical architecture) was presented on January 23, 1926, by John Logie Baird...