Spycraft - Melton [53]
OTS responded with a subminiature camera design that carried the designation “T-100.”1 Just one-sixth the size of the Minox issued to Penkovsky a decade earlier, its small size and cylindrical shape allowed the T-100 to be integrated into a wide array of personal items, such as pens, watches, cigarette lighters, or key fobs.
A jewel of watchmaking mechanical precision and optical miniaturization, the camera’s 4-millimeter diameter lens was made up of eight elements. Tiny, precisely ground glass elements, some only a bit larger than a pinhead, were exactingly stacked, one on top of another, to achieve clarity in photographing a standard 81 ⁄2-by-11-inch page.
“The craftsmanship and the technology that went into making the lens assembly was something that may never be repeated,” said George, more than three decades after the camera was first introduced.
The T-100’s film, lens, and shutter mechanism were housed in a single aluminum casing that measured one and a half inches long and three-eighths of an inch in diameter. As each picture was snapped, the film automatically advanced from one tiny spool inside the cassette to another, making it the world’s smallest “point and shoot” camera. Under optimum conditions, the camera’s 15-inch filmstrip could hold approximately 100 exposures.
Built under tight security to OTS specs by a precision optical contractor, the T-100 was designed specifically for document copying. An agent could appear to be studying a technical manual, engineering drawings, or a policy paper and noiselessly snap photos by holding the camera in his closed fist eleven inches above the target. Since the lens design allowed some tolerance in the focus distance, most users could place their two elbows at normal shoulder width on a table, and with the document between them, conceal the camera in clasped hands at the apex of the triangle.
In other document copy operations, agents could mount a 35mm camera on a tripod, frame the document, snap away, and be assured of quality pictures. With the T-100, the agent became the tripod and needed to position the camera precisely for each image. Although the film advanced automatically with each exposure, there was no autofocus function and without a viewfinder it was difficult to be certain the document was centered.2
Nothing about the T-100 was ordinary, right down to the film it required. Due to of the size of the cassette’s spools and operational realities that favored packing as many images as possible in a single cassette, extremely thin film with high resolution was needed. OTS engineers found the solution not in custom-made film, but in retired stocks of Kodak 1414 film used in early satellite photography programs. Because of the sensitivity to “pay-load” weight in satellite launches, the film was designed with ultrathin emulsion and backing. OTS sliced the film into 5mm-wide 15-inch strips to fit on the T-100’s spools. Big Technology had once again assisted with the smallest of devices.
Drawing of the tiny, intricate T-100 camera assembly that could be hidden in a fountain pen or a cigarette lighter, 1972.
Loading the film into the subminiature cassettes required a skill that few could master. The small lengths of film were loaded by hand and wound around the tiny spool either in total darkness or with the aid of an infrared viewer. Then, once the film was loaded, questions always remained as to whether it was loaded correctly. “It’s kind of like testing flashbulbs,” said one tech. “The only way to test it is to run it through a camera, develop the film and see what the images look like. If they look okay, you say, that was good, but now I have to load another one. You had