Posted on 04/29/2003 12:09:48 PM PDT by freepatriot32
Care packages of candy bars and beef jerky are a welcome taste of home to soldiers in Iraq, but an inventor has something they could really use: a way to make them invisible to the eyes of the enemy.
Ray M. Alden has designed a system of tiny lenses and mirrors he says could be used to camouflage almost any object - a tank, a Humvee or an individual soldier - in any environment.With such a device,fighting forces would have less to fear from the urban combat they still face in the treacherous alleys of Iraqi cities, where they are searching for armed holdouts of Saddam Hussein's regime. To the human eye peering out from a barricaded door, the soldiers would simply disappear into the background.
Alden's idea may not be as Buck Rogers as it seems. A Japanese company already has developed a system that can make individual objects "disappear" from certain vantage points, and simple versions have been used by illusionists to make audiences think islands can vanish from the landscape. Alden's more complex concept would obscure objects from any perspective.
It would require covering the surface with lenses or "pixels" that receive, transmit and reflect light from the object's surroundings. Made into a suit, for example, the pixels could absorb light coming from a soldier's left and emit it at the same trajectory to the soldier's right, and vice versa. The result would be that a person looking at the soldier would see "through" him, observing colors in the shapes of whatever is on the other side.
"Not only can it be done," said Alden, "it will be done. It probably already is being done" in the well-guarded laboratories where military advances are made.
He has exhausted his savings pursuing the development of these and other potentially useful products.
The U.S. military has long looked for ways to make its personnel and equipment less obvious in the field of battle, a goal it calls "signature management." The most primitive technique might be painting a tank yellow before driving it into the desert, or dressing a soldier in shades of green and dropping him into the jungle to fight. Radar blocking is a little more sophisticated.
Alden, who has a business degree and has done marketing for a handful of software companies in North Carolina, said he quit his job a year ago to pursue his dream of becoming an inventor. He has five patents in hand and has another 20 pending, including the pixels-and-mirrors camouflage. Each U.S. patent costs at least $1,000 in fees. He has spent thousands more on patent applications abroad.
Some of Alden's designs can be seen on his Web site, inventricity.com.
Unlike his work in the information technology field, where he was in constant contact with clients and other contractors, his life as an inventor has been largely a solitary pursuit, Alden said.
"You can't really talk to anybody about it. Everything is secret."
Alden said he has presented his idea to military researchers and defense contractors, who he says have expressed interest. But he has not sold the concept, or any of his others. They're still on the market.
And now that he has run out money, so is he. "Basically," he said, "you could say I'm looking for gainful employment."
Just another slickmeister trolling for dollars.
This is one of my dog wearing the system. Check this out!
And this is my house, after invisibility.
What do you think?
yeah..as a matter of fact, his invention also makes "special" clothes for emperors.
Now you just KNOW Baghdad Bob wants to get one of these. (let's just tell him he already has one...he just can't see it)
This seems like it would be the hard part. How do you get it (the light) to come out on the same trajectory? Otherwise, it's just a fiber optic suit. The Discovery Channel aired a program that talked about this research a while back.
The inventor shot down that idea because it is impossible to make the tiny lens with a wide enough angle to get around Hillary's enormous thighs.
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