The past decade has seen a major resurgence in optics research and the
teaching of optics throughout the major universities both in this
country and abroad. Electrooptical devices have become a challenging
form of study that has penetrated both the electrical engineering and
the physics departments of most major schools. There seems to be
something challeng- ing about a laser that appeals to both the practical
electrical engineer with a hankering for fundamental research and to the
fundamental physicist with a hankering to be practical. Somehow or other
this same form of enthusiasm has not previously existed in the study of
photoelectronic devices that form images. This field of, endeavor is
becoming more and more so- phisticated as newer forms of solid state
devices enter the field not only in the data processing end but in the
conversion of radiant energy into electrical charge patterns that are
stored, manipulated, and read out in a way that a decade ago would have
been considered beyond some fundamental limit or other. It is
unfortunate, however, that this kind of material has heretofore been
learned only by the process of becoming an apprentice in one or more of
the major development laboratories concerned with the manufacture of
image intensifiers or television tubes or the production of systems
employing these devices.