IT'S A RAY, ITS A LASER, NO IT'S "SPY GLASS" 

Technology today has big ears -- and eyes. While you type on an IBM Selectric, an unseen vibration is moving your office windowpane. Your computer screen can be intercepted from outside your office -- sometimes from up to a mile away! What to do?

Now under development at the Pilkington Technology Centre in Lancashire, England is what they are calling "Data Defense Glass". There appears to be a large market for glass that will attenuate radio, TV or radar frequencies, according to Dr. M. J. Davis at the Pilkington Centre. Relax. They are working on the problem.

The new glass is already providing an "electronic enclosure" for video display units, internal partition, and glazing and for windows near a Swedish Airport.

Eventually available in double-glazed units such visually attractive products will also interest users currently having problems, not from signals going out to unauthorized parties, but from outside interference entering their electronic apparatus. Data Defense Glass can handle both problems.

Signals from internal electronic operations will reflect on the window as previously, but the new window glass contains a conductive metallic coating which will bounce the "secret" information back harmlessly into your working area. The same applies to electromagnetic waves that may try to enter your building from outside. They will be foiled in a similar manner by the interior glass coating and bounced back outside before they can interfere with your equipment.

Outside screening of an entire building may be cheaper than incorporating the protective glass around office electronic machinery on the inside. Such demand is anticipated to increased coated glass sales, including solar, heat-loss and color-changing glass to account for more than half of Pilkington's glass sales -- C$4 billion last year -- by the mid-1990s. More information: Dr. M.S. Davies, Pilkington Technology Centre, Hall Lane, Lathom, Nr. Ormskirk, Lancashire, L40 5UF, England.

Phone: 0695/ 50000. Fax: 0695-54507.

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