standard video output. The optical parts are made from germanium, because glass is opaque at the wavelengths involved. These cameras have found a new role in sporting events where they are able to show (for example) where a ball has struck a bat. Laser lighting display techniques are combined with computer emulation in the LaserMAME project. It is a vector-based system, unlike the raster displays thus-far described. Laser light reflected from computer-controlled mirrors traces out images generated by classic arcade software which is executed by a specially modified version of the MAME emulation software. Technical aspects Flying spot scanners The most common method for creating the video signal was the "flying spot scanner", developed as a remedy for the low sensitivity that photoelectric cells had at the time. Instead of a television camera that took pictures, a flying spot scanner projected a bright spot of light that scanned rapidly across the subject scene in a raster pattern, in a darkened studio. The light reflected from the subject was picked up by banks of photoelectric cells and amplified to become the video signal. In the scanner the narrow light beam was produced by an arc lamp shining through the holes in a spinning Nipkow disk. Each sweep of the spot across the scene produced a "scan line" of the picture. A single "frame" of the picture was typically made up of 24, 48, or 60 scan lines. The scene was typically scanned 15 or 20 times per second, producing 15 or 20 video frames per second. The varying brightness of the point where the spot fell reflected varying amounts of light, which was converted to a proportionally varying electronic signal by the photoelectric cells. To achieve adequate sensitivity, instead of a single cell, a number of photoelectric cells were used. Like mechanical television itself, flying spot technology grew out of phototelegraphy (facsimile). This scanning method began in the 19th century. The BBC television service used the flying spot method until 1935. German television used flying spot methods as late as 1938. This year was by far not the end of flying spot scanner technology. The German inventor Manfred von Ardenne designed a flying spot scanner with a CRT as the light source. In the 1950s, DuMont marketed Vitascan, an entire flying-spot color studio system. Today, graphic scanners still use this scanning method. The flying spot method has two disadvantages: Actors must