[dtvmcdonald]

I once had, and used a lot, a very special vidicon, the usual 1" camera size. It had
a target that was PbS/PbSe (instead of the PbO of a Plumbicon) and thus worked
well into the infrared, to about 2.8 microns! It was in a very ordinary Sony industrial camera
but the lens was a single element of silicon and thus opaque to the eye. In a room lit by
incandescent light it took rather ordinary looking pictures (using light in the range
1.1 - 2.5 microns). In a room lit by fluorescents only, the long kind, it showed only the
filaments. A soldering iron was quite bright. Outdoors, trees had white leaves.
All pictures were sharp, great gamma and contrast.

We used it to look at infrared laser beams.