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History of infrared technology

Moving the thermometer into the dark region beyond the red end of the spectrum, Her-

schel confirmed that the heating continued to increase. The maximum point, when he

found it, lay well beyond the red end – in what is known today as the ‘infrared wavelengths’.

When Herschel revealed his discovery, he referred to this new portion of the electromag-

netic spectrum as the ‘thermometrical spectrum’. The radiation itself he sometimes re-

ferred to as ‘dark heat’, or simply ‘the invisible rays’. Ironically, and contrary to popular

opinion, it wasn't Herschel who originated the term ‘infrared’. The word only began to ap-

pear in print around 75 years later, and it is still unclear who should receive credit as the

originator.

Herschel’s use of glass in the prism of his original experiment led to some early controver-

sies with his contemporaries about the actual existence of the infrared wavelengths. Differ-

ent investigators, in attempting to confirm his work, used various types of glass

indiscriminately, having different transparencies in the infrared. Through his later experi-

ments, Herschel was aware of the limited transparency of glass to the newly-discovered

thermal radiation, and he was forced to conclude that optics for the infrared would prob-

ably be doomed to the use of reflective elements exclusively (i.e. plane and curved mir-

rors). Fortunately, this proved to be true only until 1830, when the Italian investigator,

Melloni, made his great discovery that naturally occurring rock salt (NaCl) – which was

available in large enough natural crystals to be made into lenses and prisms – is remark-

ably transparent to the infrared. The result was that rock salt became the principal infrared

optical material, and remained so for the next hundred years, until the art of synthetic crys-

tal growing was mastered in the 1930’s.

Figure 17.3 Macedonio Melloni (1798–1854)

Thermometers, as radiation detectors, remained unchallenged until 1829, the year Nobili

invented the thermocouple. (Herschel’s own thermometer could be read to 0.2 °C (0.036 °

F), and later models were able to be read to 0.05 °C (0.09 °F)). Then a breakthrough oc-

curred; Melloni connected a number of thermocouples in series to form the first thermopile.

The new device was at least 40 times as sensitive as the best thermometer of the day for

detecting heat radiation – capable of detecting the heat from a person standing three me-

ters away.

The first so-called ‘heat-picture’ became possible in 1840, the result of work by Sir John

Herschel, son of the discoverer of the infrared and a famous astronomer in his own right.

Based upon the differential evaporation of a thin film of oil when exposed to a heat pattern

focused upon it, the thermal image could be seen by reflected light where the interference

effects of the oil film made the image visible to the eye. Sir John also managed to obtain a

primitive record of the thermal image on paper, which he called a ‘thermograph’.

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