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LED Matrix Manufacture Exhibit

Technical Information

Catalogue No: C0626
Category: Head-Mounted Equipment [HMD/NVG/Glasses]
Object Type: Module/Sub-Assembly/Component
Object Name: LED Matrix Manufacture Exhibit
Part No: None
Serial No: None
Manufacturer: Unknown
Division: Unknown
Platform(s):
Year of Manufacture: 1975
Dimensions: Width (mm): 75
Height (mm): 115
Depth (mm): 12
Weight (g): 351
Location: Unknown
Inscription(s):

[card 1]
Starting material
Gallium Arsenide Phosphide (GaAsP) [slice]
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[card 2]
GaAsP with deposited Silicon Nitride (Si₃ N₄) layer which is to act as diffusion mask
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[card 3]
Slice with device pattern defined as windows in nitride layer
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[card 4]
Array mounted on substrate after cutting isolation channels. The 2 thou [50µm] cuts penetrate the gold layer to isolate cathodes in rows.
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[card 5]
Matrix mounted on substrate and stitch bonded. Ready for assembly to header.

Notes:

This item is a set of card mounted exhibits showing the manufacturing stages of a GaSaP LED matrix - possibly by the GEC Hirst Research Centre at Wembley.

Since 1965, in an attempt to improve aircraft man-machine design, engineers have been pioneering techniques to "visually couple" the operator to his weapon system.

The facility in Point Mugu, California, started as a United States Navy anti-aircraft training centre during World War II and was developed in the late 1940s as the Navy's major missile development and test facility. This facility was the site where most of the US Navy's missiles were developed and tested during the 1950/1960 era so it was a natural site to evaluate Visually coupled systems in the form of Helmet Mounted Displays and Head trackers , including the AIM-7 Sparrow family and the AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air, Bullpup air-to-surface, and Regulus surface-to-surface missiles.

In 1976 Marconi Elliott Avionic Systems supplied a Helmet Mounted Sight built into the standard APH-6 Helmet and using an LED Matrix display source projecting through s relay optics onto a dichroic patch on the visor and thence to the pilot’s right eye.

The LED matrix display was either 20 x 23 dots with added alpha numerics or a 32 x 32 dot matrix
A simple optical Line of Sight tracking system was fitted using the MEASL Helmet Optical Position Sensing (HOPS) system developed by the Flight Automation Research Lab. Variants of the Sighting system were flight tested on an F-4 and T-38 at Pt Magu and on a Lynx helicopter and Jaguar in the UK.

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