Kid Brother

There was, of course, no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment . . . You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct --in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

--George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

In a hotel room near Boston one night recently, a private detective sat down before a television set and leaned back to enjoy a local show that, if aired nationally, might outdraw Dragnet. The private eye, hired by an angry husband to get the goods on his playful wife, was tuned to the goings-on in a nearby room, as relayed by a TV camera installed behind a oneway mirror in a closet door. Occasionally he snapped a photograph of the television picture. It was strictly routine; twice before his agency had used peeping TV in divorce actions, both times had got evidence enough for out-of-court settlements.

Such eavesdropping by television is not common, yet the out-of-studio use of the TV camera as a versatile, unsleeping third eye for man is more widespread than most televiewers, busy ogling Lucy and Groucho, are aware. In Houston's city jail, eight electronic cameras scan the corridors and cells. In the Redlands, Calif, jail, two cameras mounted in a bulletproof blister overlook the exercise yard, another, perched in the wall opposite the cell tier, swings from side to side like a metronome, staring balefully at the men in their bunks. Television eyes peer down at customers and clerks in the Alpha Beta grocery in Pasadena, Calif., watching for shoplifters.

Sugar Cane & Shells. In an age already short on privacy, the danger is apparent, but most of the watchdog work of television thus far has been beneficial. TV cameras, trimmed down to shoebox size and able to see in the dark when used with infra-red light, can go places and do things too dangerous for humans.

In Great Britain, TV's most spectacular role has been under water: in 1951, a camera ringed with searchlights was lowered 285 feet to the rocky bottom of the English Channel to find and identify the lost submarine Affray (TIME, Sept. 24, 1951). Off the coast of Elba, Royal Navy TV cameras have plunged for the remains of the Comet jetliner that crashed into the sea last January.

U.S. industry has made the greatest use of watchdog TV. At an annual saving of $12,000 in guard salaries, Watertown Arsenal in Massachusetts posts TV cameras for 24-hour watch of 300 yards of fence. Television eyes help check the speed of sugar cane moving along a conveyor belt at the Ewa Plantation near Honolulu, tip off workmen when the cane jams up. At Chicago's Argonne National Laboratory, scientists manipulate radioactive material with intricate "slave hands" by means of three-dimensional camera that gives the necessary depth perception for delicate handling. The military has drafted television to get safe closeups of automatic shell loading, seek out enemy targets for guided missiles, and, with cameras mounted in planes and jeeps, survey the front ines for commanders in rear areas.

Jockeys & Croupiers. Only a handful of television manufacturers, notably Diamond Power Specialty Corp. of Lancaster, Ohio, makes specialized TV units (average installation cost: $4,000). Compared to entertainment TV, it is still small potatoes, but the field is wide open. Foxboro Bay State Raceway outside Boston has signed up for a battery of cameras to monitor races at various points along the rack. The new Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, now going up, will have closed-circuit TV to let a guest read a dinner menu on his TV set or give him a look at the nightclub act going on downstairs. In Las Vegas, the plush Sands Hotel is installing a TV detective system to watch over the gaming tables, seek out cheating customers or croupiers (Harolds Club, Reno's massive gambling palace, tried TV for a while, but dropped it in favor of its time-tested system of watchmen who prowl catwalks behind the murals).

Televisionaries confidently forecast the day when every home will have its private network (so mother can keep track of the kids) and telephones will come equipped with TV screens. But there is a chill in the air: in that event, would Big Brother and his thought-controlling telescreen be far behind? Active as peeping TV is today, Big Brother is still a kid brother.

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