Knowledge

The thermal imaging camera and how it works

A thermal imaging camera records the intensity of radiation in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum and converts it to a visible image.

The existence of infrared was discovered in 1800 by astronomer Sir Frederick William Herschel.

Curious to the thermal difference between different light colors, he directed sunlight through a glass prism to create a spectrum and then measured the temperature of each color. He found that the temperatures of the colors increased from the violet to the red part of the spectrum.