Night glasses, beer bottles, or aids for peeping toms.

[j.sabourn]

Anyone remember the old beer bottle brass glasses usually matched the old telescope which was a BOT requirement on British ships at one time. As regards the binoculars I always found they did nothing for my night vision and used ordinary binoculars. How they ever got the term night glasses any one know ?.
A Norwegian seismic ship I was on for a couple of weeks in 2000 however did have proper night glasses... 2 sets on the bridge. Think they were charged by a battery and were kept on a trickle charge when not in use. Whilst not like the movies where you can see everything as normal in complete darkness , did allow you to make out figures and silhouettes of people and ships like a grainy black and white photograph These were probably there for the use of pirate prevention.
Previous to that in 1982 did trials for an HMS vessel which had heat seeking location direction finding for hostile insurgents into the Falkland Islands. Didn’t get to see if they also showed a picture.
This is a lot of years ago now, and for those who have any later knowledge and knowing how technology is supposed to advance in leaps and bounds , do we have today or yesterday proper night glasses on merchant ships ?...Cheers JS...

[Shaun Gander]

I've never used them but night vision goggles are used heavily in helicopter Ops - air ambulance, police and obviously the military.

I believe they have to have special instrument lighting as the standard ones are to bright and over power the googles.

Someone once joked that the first Gulf war relied heavily on these googles but Sadam Hussaij could have crippled the allies by just turning on all the lights! Not sure how true that is....

SDG

[j.sabourn]

The ones I am referring to were just like an ordinary pair of binoculars , think you had to press a button on same to set whatever type of rays they work on. Was like looking at one of these old grainy type movies of Charlie Chaplin. JS