From the Editor

Twice a year, at the meetings of the Optical Society of America, we gather together for lunch and two or three hours of discussion the Feature Editors, Reporters, Patents Panelists, and columnists of Applied Optics to discuss our progress and problems. One item on each agenda is the selection of feature topics for future issues. We have also extended standing invitations to all of you to write your suggestions to us. However, we must confess that we were a little surprised when we received a letter from Seymour Rosin suggesting that we feature Bubble Chamber Optics. Your Editor, who prior to functioning on this journal had remained immersed in the rather specialized field of the infrared transmission of the atmosphere, was not quite sure what a bubble chamber was, let alone its optics. After a kind friend had brought us up to date on the happenings in nuclear physics over the past ten years or so, we put the suggestion on the agenda of our next meeting. Dr. Rosin attended the meeting, gave us a short description of the various bubble chambers now in operation or construction all over the world, and agreed to serve as Feature Editor. Let that serve as a word of caution to the rest of you; if your suggestion is taken seriously you are very likely to be asked to work. Dr. Rosin went to work with a will, and not only persuaded W. T. Welford to write the major review paper but also enlisted the help of Dr. Welford in stimulating and reading other pertinent papers. When we had first agreed on this topic your Editor had had the secret hope that perhaps such a special­ized topic would result in a smaller feature section, leaving a little more room in the journal for the mountain of backlogged contributed papers. But alas this was not to be: we are begin­ning to suspect that there is no topic so specialized that it could not fill an issue. A few months after we had chosen this topic we attended a lecture on Strange Particles by Edwin McMillan where it became abundantly clear how essential the bubble chamber as an optical tool is to the exploration of this field of physics. (In fact we have a vague private apprehension that perhaps some of the stranger particles are really internal reflec­tions in the apparatus.) We are grateful to Dr. Rosin, Dr. Welford, and all of the others who have contributed to this issue.

Let us turn again to our Complaint Department, which we have been neglecting lately. "I have always been somewhat lukewarm toward the idea of publishing survey papers such as Optics in . . . in this type of a journal. Such articles are certainly devoid of lasting interest, and do nothing to advance

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the state-of-the-art. A periodical such as Physics Today, or something having more the characteristics of a newspaper would seem a more appropriate place for this kind of article." "Can I make a suggestion about your review articles, a suggestion which stems from the one on Optics in Great Britain? Such articles are always better if they are by one person because that person usually makes a great effort to obtain a fair balance. If there is more than one person it is difficult for them to know how to share the remaining topics outside their own work. For example, in this particular case, work on photographic objectives received very little attention nor did fibre optics. I know all three of the authors, and admire them and their work greatly. My criticism is merely concerning their working as a 'troika'." In our third issue last year, which featured "International Optics" we had quite a number of these survey papers. This was intended to give our audience a feeling for the magnitude and diversity of the optical activities in other countries. Many people have said they found these useful, and from time to time we hope to include some additional articles of this sort, particularly for those countries which we missed in that issue. We are not yet per­suaded that a single author gives a more uniform coverage of optics than a team. This is because no two people have quite the same concept of what is optics, and particularly applied optics. Most of the single authors of these surveys made a good summary of optics per se, but the coverage of such topics as astro­physics, physical meteorology, and atomic and molecular spectro­scopy was rather spotty, even though many of our authors and our readers consider themselves as belonging in these fields. One must remember, however, that most of these authors had already submitted their manuscripts before the first issue of our journal appeared, so that our "character" was not yet established.

One or two of you have disapproved of our historical articles, with the same arguments as those above: they do not contribute to the state-of-the-art, they use up space that could be used for contributed papers. It is true that we have a large backlog of papers at the moment, and we are exploring ways to reduce this, but the saving that would have been gained by omitting the two or three historical articles that we have had would be practically imperceptible. An occasional paper of this sort helps maintain our character just as much as do our various departments. While we will cheerfully agree that scientists should face forward most of the time, we need from time to time to have our field put into perspective, and articles of this sort help to do that. Science is much more than the mathematical representation of physical reality; it is another aspect of man groping, and most of us need to be reminded of this.

JOHN N. HOWARD