Innovations patents, processes, and products

Protection from laser beams Human eyes, and such light-sensitive detectors as cameras and lenses, are vulnerable to intense laser beams. Two consultants, Vincent McKoy and Amitave Gupta, were awarded U.S. patent 4 622174 on Nov. 11,1986, for a shield that allows harmless broadband light beams to pass through while absorbing and blocking the narrow spectral band containing the harmful laser power. Ambient light occupying the remainder of the spectral band is not affected. The shield, called a BAF (for Barnes absorbant filter), was invented for Barnes Engineering Co. of Stamford, Conn.