...that after Parker Brothers executives turned down the game of Monopoly because it had "52 fundamental errors" (including taking too long to play), a copy of the game wound up in the home of the company president who stayed up until 1 a.m. to finish playing it? He was so impressed by the game that the next day he wrote to inventor Charles Darrow and offered to buy it!
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AbstractA contraband detection system especially suited for detecting concealed non-metallic contraband such as ceramic or plastic weapons or illegal drugs carried by a person is disclosed. Plural sources of quasi-coherent millimeter wave radiation are disposed so as to uniformly illuminate a field of view. In the preferred embodiment, the radiation emitted by the sources is linearly polarized in a single plane such that the polarization of the radiation with respect to the plane in which linearly polarized radiation is preferentially received by the detectors can be controlled. For detection of dielectric objects, such as ceramic weapons or narcotics, these planes of polarization should be orthogonal to one another. The detector is a staring array which does not require scanning to generate an image of the entire field of view; the signal provided by each element of the detector array corresponds to the illumination reflected from objects in a single portion of the field of view. Real-time imaging of concealed dielectric and metallic objects is thus made possible.Other References
| InventorsAssigneeApplicationNo. 286210 filed on 12/19/1988US Classes:342/179, Image production250/332, Including detector array342/351Including a radiometerField of Search342/179, Image production342/351, Including a radiometer342/53, With infrared device250/330, INFRARED-TO-VISIBLE IMAGING250/331, Including liquid crystal detector250/332, Including detector array250/334Including means for scanning field of viewExaminersPrimary: Barron, Gilberto Jr.Attorney, Agent or FirmUS Patent References3403399, 3713156, 3746454, 3772689, 3824593, 3909827, 4106014, Radar set sensitive to target shapeIssued on: 08/08/1978 Inventor: Dunn4164740, Synthetic aperture using image scanner Issued on: 08/14/1979 Inventor: Constant4521861, Method and apparatus for enhancing radiometric imaging Issued on: 06/04/1985 Inventor: Logan , et al.4611912, Method and apparatus for optically measuring distance and velocity Issued on: 09/16/1986 Inventor: Falk , et al.4754277Apparatus and method for producing linear frequency sweep Issued on: 06/28/1988 Inventor: Voyce International ClassesG01S 013/89H01L 027/146 |