XXX-Ray Camera by D. Trull Enigma Editor dtrull@parascope.com Anyone who's ever read comic books from the good old days will undoubtedly remember the ads for "x-ray specs," the astounding and mysterious eyeglasses that promised to let you see right through skin or (gulp) girls' dresses. Unlike most who coveted those nigh-mythical talismans of adolescent fantasy, I was lucky enough to actually have a pair of them when I was a kid. Alas, I can only confirm the dread suspicions that x-ray specs were just a crappy ripoff. The lenses were composed of cardboard with only half-inch holes punched out at the center of printed hypno-swirls. The tiny eye apertures were screened over with fine red filaments, which looked to be composed of nothing more high-tech than a dyed bird feather. When you peered out through the feather-like material, everything had a blurred and gauzy look, with all the edges fuzzed out. If you held your hand up in front of a bright light in just a certain way, the hazy outline made your fingers look weird and skinny, or, if you really used your imagination, kind of like skeletal finger bones. But not really. I never managed to see through anybody's clothes, hot chicks or otherwise. The unfulfilled dream of x-ray vision remains a compelling fantasy, adolescent or otherwise, as proven by a recent maelstrom of interest in a particular consumer electronics product. In a manner said to be completely unintended by its manufacturers, a Sony camcorder equipped with an infrared night vision function can apparently see through clothing. That's one step better than x-ray specs, kids, since you get everything down on tape for later. This technological miracle was discovered in a line of Sony Handycam video cameras that include a special feature called NightShot, designed to record images in nighttime conditions with little or no visible light. The cameras contain an infrared transmitter which projects infrared light onto the subject, and a special CCD chip that enables the camera to detect and record light in the infrared spectrum. The effect is akin to the green-tinted night footage of Baghdad on CNN that became so familiar during the Gulf War. As the Sony web site explains it, "Even when there's NO light, NightShot's built in infrared light turns night into day. Because you should see what you're missing." Yes, and Sony should have seen what they were missing -- which was the strange things that might happen if someone used the NightShot feature in broad daylight. Sony must have assumed, logically enough, that people would only have need for infrared illumination at night. But it's bad business to count on consumers being logical. In a discovery that was first publicized by a Japanese men's magazine, it so happens that in a well-lit setting, in certain instances, a NightShot camera can seem to penetrate fabric, revealing the underwear of fully clothed individuals, or making people in swimwear appear virtually naked. Let the Beavises and Butt-Heads of the world rejoice. This potentially salacious effect requires the use of a special filter that tricks the camera into thinking it's in the dark, enabling the infrared feature. Since the NightShot mode is sensitive to differences in temperature in what it photographs, bodies can seem to glow from underneath people's clothes. The effect is most pronounced in cases of thin, cool, light-colored outer clothing and contrasting dark undergarments, and it evidently requires a mixture of visible and infrared light, which is why it only works in the daytime. NightShot is by no means a magical, wet-dream x-ray technology capable of turning any street corner into a pornographic wonderland. The cameras simply produce an indistinct, black and white (or green and white, actually) image which sometimes sees through clothing, and sometimes creates the illusion of seeing through clothing, and the rest of the time doesn't see through anything. "There's no way you're going to see a freckle," one expert told Newsweek, "and I seriously doubt you'd see a nipple, either." Such reports did little to discourage legions of curious video hobbyists and would-be peeping Toms, who sent demand through the roof once the NightShot Handycams' accidental properties were disclosed. Camera dealers around the globe were cleaned out of the models in question, and Sony suspended production when the horrified corporation learned it had unwittingly produced the world's first NudieCam. Sony did not issue a product recall on NightShot cameras, but the company began producing them with the infrared feature modified so that it cannot be activated in bright light, even with the aid of a filter. That means a large number of fully functional peekaboo cameras are still out there, somewhere, perhaps falling into the dubious clutches of perverts, stalkers and U.S. presidents. There was speculation that the cameras would command a high price on the black market after the story first broke, but in the months since then, the NightShot craze seems to have mellowed out into a low-profile cult pastime. Some conspiracy theories have it that Sony secretly helped encourage the x-ray camera hype, jumping at the chance to unload its slow-moving NightShot products that were being passed up in favor of trendy digital video cameras. Ironically, the issue of nudity has cost Sony dearly in the past: legend has it that the company's Betamax format went extinct partly because of Sony's reluctance to condone its use in the video pornography industry. With its irresistible combination of technology, nudity and forbidden stuff "they" don't want you to have, the NightShot Handycam phenomenon was ordained for canonization on the Internet, and there is at least one web site laying claim to The First NightShot Filter X-ray Nude Image. The site has a lot of good first-hand evidence of the camera's remarkable see-through powers (some of which has been borrowed for this page), but do these pictures really constitute "nudes"? Kind of, but not really. Of course, the NightShot is only a harbinger of the prurient progress that tomorrow holds in store. Sony may not have intended to design a camera that turns people naked, but you better believe somebody else will... and eventually, they'll make one that works perfectly. The only invention that could possibly be more unimaginably successful and in demand than that would be lead-plated lingerie. Sources: Reuters; Electronic Telegraph; Newsweek, August 24, 1998; Sony web site; The First NightShot Filter X-ray Nude Image web site. Special acknowledgement to Bruce Sterling. © Copyright 1999 ParaScope, Inc. Click Here for More Fortean Slips! Fortean Slips message board: Share your views