The Boston Camera

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Camera

by tragiclos • 5 years ago

132 41 5 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

tlb• 5 years ago

drool

Post-WWII would have been a great time to be working in tech. "To photograph people's faces from high altitude, we'll need a lens with a 240 inch focal length." "But our airplanes are only 140 inches diameter". "We'll use mirrors."

systemvoltage2• 5 years ago

This is what I love about United States, England, Russia, etc. during this era as well as pre-WWII. The rate of innovation, the enormous challenges, the bombe, the transitor, the Sputnik and countless innovations that was presumably a result of unity amongst people, great purpose to life and dedication to their nations.

Makes my hair stand up thinking about working on a project such as the Boston Camera. People like Feynman walked around alive and computers were being invented.

Hey Silicon Valley, why are we working on ads? (myself included). I wanna do something else.

astrea2• 5 years ago

Advanced research is happening all over the country (even in your very own backyard in Silicon Valley). You just aren't looking for these types of jobs or are too distracted by the shiny compensation packages

SilverRed• 5 years ago

The vast majority of people back then were working even more boring and less creative jobs.

Still mountains of stuff being invented now. Almost the entire history of smartphones comes from the last 10 years.

If you think this camera in the OP is cool, you should also be impressed that we are putting periscopes and mirrors inside phones to create adjustable zoom that fits in your pocket and costs hardly anything.

v-yadli• 5 years ago

What, other than ads, are you expecting from Neoliberalism? ;)

pottertheotter• 5 years ago

I had a similar conversation with my wife yesterday. I was telling her that so much of Silicon Valley seems to be focused on low-value work. The financial investments might pay off well, but the overall value to society is low. Having been an investor, I don't fault anyone for making those investments. But I wish there was more focus on other areas.

Another commenter made a valid point that there is a lot else going on, if you're not blinded by high comp. I guess that's true for both investors and employees.

There's a lot out there that doesn't work with the current VC model. Some of it is that there are great potential businesses that aren't going to be billion dollar exits. I think a lot of these are more interesting or worthwhile things to work on. There are VCs that will invest in those, but I think the amount of equity they take is too high.

Then there are a bunch of great things to work on that require lots of capex. These are also worthwhile and interesting. Other countries are making those investments, and we're going to be in a bad place by not doing the same.

ppod• 5 years ago

The unity and dedication "amongst people" was due to inter-national political competition and fear. The overall purpose of these inventions was to threaten mass murder.

dtgriscom• 5 years ago

Pedant here; focal length and aperture are (literally) orthogonal concepts.

vel0city2• 5 years ago

I highly recommend visiting the museum in Dayton if you're even a slight aviation nerd and happen to be in the region. Its worth the drive. Where else can you see a U2, a B2, an F22, an SR-71, and an F117 all the same hangar? Trick question, they have the only B2 on display!

They have a massive range of the history of aviation with a good mixture of foreign birds as well as US aircraft. I'm personally a fan of those classic Douglas planes, they're so incredibly iconic and have quite a showing at the museum.

EDIT: I guess I should clarify the relation to this article. The actual prototype is housed at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH along with the C-97 that carried it on display. They have a small exhibit with some example photos of its technology. Its literally right next to the B2 on display.

chrisdalke• 5 years ago

Definitely agree -- It's on par with the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, and very fun to explore since it's divided between four hangers. Definitely worth a visit for anyone in that area.

jeffdubin• 5 years ago

There's also a lot of history provided by the docents, including many USAF veterans who have flown, maintained, or were otherwise involved with some of the very aircraft on display. If you're a fan of aviation, the military, history, or technology, this museum is worth making a special trip to Dayton, OH. https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/

mikey_p• 5 years ago

Don't forget the XB-70, they also have the only one of those on display.*

* Actually it's the only XB-70 in existence.

Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie

quercusa• 5 years ago

The whole museum is fantastic, but walking into the fourth hanger and seeing the Valkyrie takes it up a notch.

The planes are fantastic but the highlight for us was talking to a former F-4 pilot about techniques for dodging SA-2s. Highly recommended.

mauvehaus• 5 years ago

Haven't been in a while, but when they still had the annex on-base there was an A-12 there. Have they moved it into the museum proper? That'd be a sight to see next to the SR-71.

Tacit Blue is also worth a look. It's honestly hard to imagine anything so ungainly actually taking to the air.

ETA: Dunno if they still have it on display, but for a long time they had just the forward fuselage of Bock's Car sitting unloved in a corner. It's hard to reconcile the destruction unleashed by that single plane with the utter impotence of a piece of it sitting helplessly in a museum.

vel0city2• 5 years ago

I'm not sure about an A-12 there. I last went a little over a year ago and only noticed the SR-71.

As to the Bockscar, they have it on display with its payload bay open along with replicas of Fat Man and Little Boy under its wings.

https://imgur.com/a/jSLxh9M https://imgur.com/a/jSLxh9M

edwhitesell• 5 years ago

We went a few years ago and loved it. We happened to be there on the day the Memphis Belle exhibit was being opened (rained out the day before), which also meant they were doing flyovers of WWII planes and bussing people out to the runway to do tours in and around the planes.

All that being said, the highlight for us was seeing the WWII planes fly overhead and then seeing one of the VC-25As flying past seconds later. Multiple times. The rumor was they were doing takeoff/landing training.

ReactiveJelly• 5 years ago

Precursor to the Gorgon Stare systems? [1]

I assume 70 years of tech has only resulted in surveillance that is cheaper, lighter, with longer loiter times, on a smaller plane, farther away, and a clearer, faster image.

And since politicians never listen to me, I feel helpless to vote it down.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_stare

vermilingua• 5 years ago

Does nobody in the military stop for a second to consider the optics (heh heh) of naming a surveillance system after an evil mythological figure?

xwdv• 5 years ago

It strikes terror into the heart of our enemies.

squirrelmaker• 5 years ago

Perhaps the WAMI (the category of device) is better? At least it sounds whimsical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide-area_motion_imagery Slightly dated L3Harris version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptSeU-OnI8E

twic• 5 years ago

This is why classic UK project naming is better - it would have been called something like BLUE SEALION.

m463• 5 years ago

That's just how it seems to work. Maybe it's a deterrent?

"Low key" names like "Big Brother"... could they be more evil.

Honestly though, if they called it something like peacekeeper maybe that would have worked.

TheGrassyKnoll• 5 years ago

Wonder if the Ruskies ever created their own camera based on this. This must have attracted some kinda spy attention.

ggm2• 5 years ago

It would be a mistake to assume only copying happened, Russian optics were good, leica factories acquired after the war but also strong physical sciences at university. Russians were perfectly capable of designing airborne folded optics.

ginko• 5 years ago

Russian optics were good, leica factories acquired after the war

It was Zeiss factories in Jena that were captured. Leitz is located in Wetzlar.

danboarder• 5 years ago

From the article: "The first photo Arthur Lundahl and I saw from this project was of New York City. The aircraft was seventy-two miles away, and yet we could see people in Central Park."

This was a camera with lenses designed in 1947. Is the current tech state of the art available? My understanding is that the close up aerial imagery on Google Maps is patched together from much lower flying aerial photos. But these CIA cameras from the 40s sound superior to what we have on Google Maps today (seeing people in central park from 72 miles away, for example).

sdenton4• 5 years ago

It's a 240 inch lens in a device weighing 6000 pounds. Seeme like there's some trade-offs involved!

Also, it's a film camera, and sounds like it had problems with image smearing in actual use in flight. My guess is that it's a very very good lens (which mainly comes down to elbow grease) paired with tech that's otherwise completely obsolete today.

femto• 5 years ago

Current technology: [1,2]. There is an interesting note in [3], about how one of these satellites is being stalked by a Russian satellite, which is trying to learn more about the US satellite.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-245

---- Edit:

Wikipedia has an image from one of the above

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-224#/media/File:2019-08-29...

Estimated resolution is 10cm or better (the 10cm/pixel image is a photo of a printout, not the original). Distance is estimated to be 382km.

mprovost• 5 years ago

Cool, this camera was installed on the Convair B-36 [0] which is one of my favourite examples of a "transitional platform". It was a bomber with 6 propeller and 4 jet engines. These days we'd call it a hybrid. It's a great example of a product that came out at a time when the new tech (jets) wasn't quite ready but still provided some advantages. But then you have the disadvantages of maintaining both the old and the new systems at the same time. Can you imagine being a mechanic working on this plane? The same as an SRE working in the cloud and a datacentre, or a developer using a modern framework and maintaining a legacy codebase.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-36_Peacemaker

jhallenworld• 5 years ago

I wonder if this had a massive xenon flash system as well, like this mentioned for WW2..

http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/edgerton/EdgertonInWor...

toomanybeersies• 5 years ago

A similar interesting lens is the 5200 mm f/14 that Canon built in the 60s: https://petapixel.com/2010/01/06/ginormous-5200mm-canon-lens...

dTal• 5 years ago

  Maximum resolution: 28 lines/mm
  Film size:          18-by-36-inch (46 cm × 91 cm)

...for a final resolution of 12,880 x 25,480, or ~1.2 gigapixels. Not bad for 1951. Never underestimate film!

The Boston Camera

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