MERIDEN, Conn. (WTNH) — Dr. Nicholas Perricone is a dermatologist known around the world for his age-defying line of makeup, but did you know this physician is also an inventor of defense gadgets?
He’s the CEO of PerriQuest in Meriden, where he has designed daytime and nighttime laser-blocking eye-wear for pilots dealing with culprits who are shining lasers into cockpits around the world on landing and take off. That temporarily blinds the pilots.
“There’s three types of lasers right now that are being used; green is the most common, but there are also blue and red lasers that are out there and they’re readily available.
They’re pointer types, and those are low-powered, they’re about five milowatts. Then there’s a high-powered like a thousand milowatts, which is actually one watt of power.
So I said, if I’m going to give protection to these pilots, we have to cover all three lasers, it has to be protected from any angle that it comes in and, mostly importantly, they have to maintain color vision, color discrimination because you have to read the instrument you have to look at navigation lights.”
“It has a tint to it, so it blocks the sun, as well. If you shot a laser at me in the daytime, I can see the laser source, but it’s not going to bother my eyes because it reduces the signal by about 99 percent.”
The glasses cost about $400 a pair and Perricone is in the process of trying to convince airlines they should buy them for their pilots.
