The world's a colorful place for most of us -- but not for a soldier peering through night-vision goggles, or a colorblind traveler using a computerized weather map. A company on the docks of South Boston is helping both kinds of people see the world in all of its hues.
Tenebraex Corp., which has developed vision protection systems for the military since 1992, is about to introduce color night-vision goggles. The technology, called ColorPath, combines a standard scope with a pair of rotating filters that vary the intensity of light coming from different colored objects. The brain interprets these variations as differences in color, enabling the viewer to recognize red and blue objects obscured by the green glow of today's night scopes.
For those born color blind, Tenebraex offers eyePilot, a $35 software program that sorts out the information contained in color-coded computer graphics.
Former professional photographer Peter Jones co founded Tenebraex with former Polaroid Corp. advertising executive Dennis Purcell.
"Dennis and I are very aggressive generalists," said Jones. "We try and know a little bit about a lot of things."
As a result, Tenebraex has tackled a variety of technical problems related to vision.
"It helped us not to know how it was supposed to be done," said Purcell.
The company's biggest success came with the development of an anti reflection device that fits over military lenses, like riflescopes and binoculars. Most such lenses are coated with a material that protects soldiers' eyes by reflecting laser light. But this coating is so shiny that its reflection can give away a soldier's position.
Tenebraex created a shield made of a honeycombed composite material in 1992. Light can enter the lens through the honeycombs, but the material blocks reflections from the lens . Today, the company sells its shields by the thousands -- some to civilian hunters to shield the scopes on their rifles. But most go to the military. The Tenebraex office is adorned with photos of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan peering through Tenebraex-shielded scopes.
Now Tenebraex has come up with a new way to help the troops -- if it can persuade the Pentagon to invest in some of the ColorPath scopes, priced at around $6,000.
"We developed it with our own money, not government money," said Jones, and Tenebraex will have to swallow the loss if it can't make the sale.
The first ColorPath scopes will be available this summer. Jones plans to make the rounds of military procurement trade shows in an effort to sell the technology. He's aiming at a vital niche market -- Army medics. They've told him that it's tough to insert intravenous tubes or treat some kinds of wounds if you can't see colors properly.
With monochrome night vision, "blood is the same color as water," Jones said.
Some medics think a color night-vision goggle will help them treat wounded soldiers faster and better.
"That's what we hope this is going to do," said Jones, "to help people do a better job of assessment and treatment."
If Tenebraex can make the sale to medics, Jones said he hopes that the technology will make its way into other military groups, such as special operations units.
The company's other product, the eyePilot software, addresses a problem that's grown worse for the color blind as more information on the Internet comes in the form of colorful charts and maps.
"An enormous amount of information is available to you, and a lot of it is color-coded," Jones said.
For example, weather websites routinely use colored maps to show areas of rain, snow, or dry weather. Public transit maps identify subway lines by color. Such maps can be indecipherable to the color blind.
"It's more information blindness than color - blindness," said Jones.
EyePilot looks like a transparent screen laid over the colored image. It lets the user highlight particular colors. For example, a weather map may use red to indicate storms. The user can click a button marked "Red" and all red areas on the map jump into sharp relief. Now the user can see the stormy areas at a glance, even if he or she can't see red.
Harry Rogers , a color blind semiconductor engineer in Andover, used to serve as a selectman in Brookline, N.H. During town meetings, he'd have trouble understanding the PowerPoint presentations with their colored graphics and charts.
"I would have to sit down in confidence with someone," said Rogers, "and say what color is this line? What color is this bar?"
Rogers learned about eyePilot during a visit to the website Craigslist. Now during technical teleconferences, he can easily decipher the charts and graphs displayed on his laptop.
"I'm able to now run eyePilot and actually make sense of what's going on," he said.
Jones said he hopes to make eyePilot even more useful by embedding the software in camera phones. A user could then identify colors in an object or a paper document by pointing and clicking.
Jones said that eyePilot has been "moderately successful" for the company since it went on sale last year. He said he hopes that sales will pick up as more color blind people learn about it.
And since eyePilot works well even for people without color - blindness, Jones said he hopes the product will appeal to anyone who uses a lot of color-coded data.
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