One of the most striking images from The Terminator was the weapon he carried and used in his first attempt on Sarah Connor’s life: the .45 Longslide, with laser sighting. Who can forget the scene in the gun shop? The gun was likewise such a striking presence on screen it was used on the film’s poster. There are T-shirts dedicated to the gun.
Terminator was released in 1984, and while laser sights on weapons are common now, when the film was first shown the red laser was able to communicate something subtle and powerful to the audience: this is a machine, deadly accurate and futuristic. It made the Terminator seem other-worldly and terrifying. At a party during CES, Deputy Editor Jon Stokes and I bumped into some representatives from SureFire, a company that specializes in tactical flashlights. We talked about some of our favorite moments with technology in cinema, and The Terminator came up.
“We created that laser!” I was told. They told me the gentleman who built the prop was named Ed Reynolds, and he was still with the company. More than a little jazzed about bumping into a fun part of film history, we knew we had to get the full story behind the Terminator’s gun.
A European project unveils a fully CMOS-compatible laser source coupled to a silicon waveguide.
A team of researchers from across Europe will present details of a fully CMOS-compatible laser source that is coupled to a silicon waveguide this week. The achievement is a major milestone in a three-year €3.2m project known as WADIMOS (Wavelength Division Multiplexed Photonic Layer on CMOS). The ultimate goal of the project is to demonstrate a photonic interconnect layer on CMOS.
WADIMOS, an EU-funded research project, started in January 2008 and has six project partners. It is co-ordinated by IMEC of Belgium and also involves STMicroelectronics, MAPPER Lithography, Lyon Institute of Nanotechnologies (INL) and the University of Trento.
Working with a circuit design from INL and IMEC, LETI completed the specific process studies for the laser source by adapting and modifying standard III-V materials process steps to comply with a CMOS environment. Specifically, LETI replaced gold-based metal contacts with a Ti/TiN/AlCu metal stack. The circuits were processed on 200 mm wafers at LETI’s facilities.
The small California start-up we wrote about last year is in the news again as more details about HDI’s laser-powered 3D TV are released. HDI-US Inc. already has orders for its prototype 103-inch 3D HDTV and is now actively marketing itself as a television manufacturer and not just a 3D solutions licensor. HDI’s platform [...]
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been following the production of Speed of Light, an ambitious laser light installation by United Visual Artists for Virgin Media. The show is now open and it doesn’t disappoint
UVA were commissioned by Virgin Media to create ‘an immersive light installation celebrating 10 years of broadband in the UK’. It comprises a series of laser-based experimental light works which flow through the labyrinthine spaces of the Bargehouse, the four-storey ex-warehouse on London’s South Bank.
2010 may be a watershed year for Laser TV as the entertainment market looks for new and exciting products to entice consumers and help the market forget lackluster sales in 2009. Sony actually lost money for the first time in over 50 years. 2009 saw Mitsubishi on top as the sole manufacturer of Laser TV with [...]
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