Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.Science: Peeping Tube
In George Orwell's bestselling shocker Nineteen Eighty-Four, the inhabitants of his frightful dictator state are spied upon day & night by all-seeing television eyes. Great posters remind them that "Big Brother is watching you."
With the television equipment in general use today, this sort of supervision is hardly practical. The "eye" of conventional television is an image orthicOn tube 14 inches long and 3 inches in diameter, usually mounted in a monstrous camera as big as a salesman's suitcase. The size and complication of the image orthicon would keep television from any use as a hidden, unwinking eye.
At last week's Manhattan convention...
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