Fog-Eye

Trippers on the Furness liner Queen of Bermuda last week were treated to a demonstration of a new aid to mariners--a device which pierces fog and darkness to tell the navigator what obstacles lie near his ship. Commander Paul Humphrey Macneil calls the device a "fog-eye." To watch its first seagoing performance a group of U. S. and British naval observers, merchant marine experts, physicists made the trip to Bermuda. Lack of fog on the outbound voyage disappointed them. But whenever the Queen passed another ship the fog-eye, connected to a loudspeaker, snorted out the news. The outlying islands of the Bermuda group caused a clatter. At Bermuda, Commander Macneil transferred his equipment to a British boat for demonstration behind smoke screens. The Macneil fog-eye, like the Macneil thermoelectric sextant perfected last year (TIME, July 25), functions according to Commander Macneil's thesis that every object not at Absolute Zero (--459.4DEG F.) radiates heat-like infra-red rays. A two-foot, concave, silvered glass mirror in the fog-eye collects infra-red radiations of objects, focuses the rays on a sensitive thermocouple which translates the infra red rays into faint currents of electricity. A compact amplifier which Physicist Edward Elway Free built for Commander Macneil, builds up the fog-eye's currents until they are strong enough to turn on warning lights, ring a gong. The fog-eye can detect differences of temperature of one-fifty-thousandth of a degree Centigrade. Its theoretical effec- tiveness is the heat of a candle eight miles away. The amplifier reacts to direct electrical currents as small as one-five-billionths of an ampere or, said plump Dr. Free at the fog-eye demonstration, "about what is produced in your own pocket by carrying copper and silver money to gether." Commander Macneil, no exaggerator, believes that his fog-eye "is unquestionably the greatest single invention for safety of life at sea ever yet achieved, with the arguable exception of radio which, however, cannot detect icebergs or lighthouses or ships unequipped with (or not using) their radio.''

Commander Macneil studied at the University of Michigan, sidetracked into electronics, plopped in the Wartime U. S. Navy. He is a solemn, slight man turning 50, whose friends consider him commercially hapless because he has let others profit from his inventions. Friends therefore have put a ward over Commander & Mrs. Macneil. Their "managing secretary" is Mrs. Ruth Mitchell Knowles, sister of General William ("Billy") Mitchell.

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