There are a number of situations in which you might want to be able to see in the dark, but it was for military purposes that night vision goggles were originally developed by American Wiliam Spicer in 1942. In later years, cameras on the goggles would take tiny amounts of light and amplify it, producing a gray or green, albeit fuzzy, image of what was happening. Alternatively, in. pitch black, where there was no light to amplify, infrared sensors showed the heat coming off things, enabling you to see everything in colors that depended on the degree of heat.
A big problem with a night-vision world represented in gray or green is that distances are hard to judge. Without the range of colors that are seen in daylight, grayish objects can be hard to distinguish from a background of similar color. The Dutch military approached the TNO research team led by Alex Toet in Soesterberg, Netherlands, to develop goggles that would show the night world in color.
The goggles—whose workings were revealed in 2005—are given a sample picture of the world during daytime from which all the colors can be identified. The goggles map this color picture onto a gray night vision picture and compare the two. After this they can instantly translate the grays of the night vision into colors whenever the goggles are used at night.
Initially the color night vision goggles have a range of settings based on urban, rural, desert, or coastal environments. Eventually, using GPS (Global Positioning System) data, they can be programmed to adjust the color ranges automatically for the specific location where they are being used. In addition to the military, the emergency services are likely to find the goggles invaluable in their night operations.
