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OmniRay Sphericular Display - Craziest Of Them All?
🕑 Added 2025-06-05 17:24:35 +0000 UTCThis very ambitious and just out there crazy Sphericular Display was developed by Burroughs to directly compete with the IEE One Plane Readout displays with a really inventive and obviously difficult to pull off complex lens assembly.
Comments
Dan Oberste
I would guess that the OmniRay was built for an aircraft’s transponder to display the squawk codes. Since it only had eight, instead of ten, bulbs, it could only be used to show eight numbers. Aviation transponders transmit a four digit code, but only uses digits between 0 and 7. For example: 1200 for VFR flights, 7500 if you’re being hijacked, 7600 if your radio malfunctions, 7700 to declare an emergency, or 7777 for military aircraft on missions to intercept aircraft flying into restricted airspace, or just not responding to Air Traffic Control (ATC). That display is a marvel of manufacturing, and accuracy, which probably led to it’s downfall. I would imagine that thing was incredibly fragile given the minute tolerances it required. I’d be curious to find out how expensive they must have been. Perhaps another clue that it was for aviation or military where cost is less of an object.
Fran Blanche
If you have a printer that will reproduce microfilm, then sure - but honestly no. You need not only the resolution of a photographic negative, but the density also - and no printers have anywhere near the density of silver.
Gary Oliver
Could you print a new mask using the ink-on-acetate film for laser printer like was used to make overhead-projector images in 'the old days'?
