History

Gatso speed camera

Gatso speed camera

Dutch company Gatsometer BV, founded by the 1950s rally driver Maurice Gatsonides, invented the first road-rule enforcement cameras. Gatsonides wished to better monitor his speed around the corners of a race track and came up with the device in order to improve his time around the circuit [1]. The company developed the first radar for use with road traffic, and is the world's largest supplier of speed camera systems. Because of this, in some countries speed cameras are sometimes referred to as "Gatsos". They are also sometimes referred to as "photo radar", even though many of them do not use radar.



The first systems introduced in the late 1960s used film cameras to take their pictures. From the late 1990s, digital cameras began to be introduced. Digital cameras can be fitted with a modem or other electronic interface to transfer images to a central processing location automatically, so they have advantages over film cameras in speed of issuing fines, and operational monitoring. However, film-based systems still generally provide superior image quality in the variety of lighting conditions encountered on roads, and in some jurisdictions are required by the courts due to the ease with which digital images may be modified. New film-based systems are still being sold.



This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Red-light_camera".