The past decade has seen a major resurgence in optical research and the teaching of optics in the major universities both in this country and abroad. Electrooptical devices have become achallenging subject of study that has penetrated both the electrical engineering and the physics departments of most major schools. There seems to be something about the laser that has appealed to both the practical electrical engineer with a hankering for fundamental research and to the fundamental physicist with a hankering to be practical. Somehow or other, this same form of enthusiasm has not previously existed in the study of photoelectronic devices that form images. This field of endeavor is becoming more and more sophisticated as newer forms of solid-state devices enter the field, not only in the data-processing end, but in the conversion of radiant energy into electrical charge patterns that are stored, manipulated, and read out in a way that a decade ago would have been considered beyond some fundamental limit or other.
