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"The point sticks in your head: physics rules. Virtue does not triumph unless the physics allows it."
- Larry Niven

CCD Eyes  
  Electronic eyes using charged-coupled devices provide a wide variety of functions.  

Offered the chance for sight, a poor orphan chooses to see - even if it means inorganic eyes.

"The heart of this eye system is CCDs - charge-coupled devices. Every bit of light - photon - that hits them triggers one or more electrons. These electrons are collected as a continuous signal, which is fed through an interpreter chip to your optic nerves. The result: perfect sight... and there are several advantages to them...

"You can store digitalized copies of a particular sight in the chip's RAM, for later display...

"...you can stare directly at the sun...

"...you can achieve a fair degree of normal sight in conditions such as a starry, moonless night.

"...you can generate false-color images."

Technovelgy from Stone Lives, by Paul Di Filippo.
Published by Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1985
Additional resources -

This list of functions is similar to that provided to Steve Austin, in The Six Million Dollar Man, the popular television show that ran from 1974 to 1978.

Compare to the metal eyes sold by the Tleilaxu in Frank Herbert's Dune series. Also, the Luxvid Eyes, or Jensen wide-angle eyes, from Philip K. Dick's 1964 novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Stone Lives
  More Ideas and Technology by Paul Di Filippo
  Tech news articles related to Stone Lives
  Tech news articles related to works by Paul Di Filippo

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