So, this "timemachine" actually does "down conversion" and gets a reading from (a thousand?) pulses of light. Kind of like when you do a charcol rubbing on a worn grave stone, one line doesn't kield much information, but a whole bunch of lines gives an accurate picture of what the stone used to look like. Anyway, I read the documents, and asked questions, and offered to help, and three years later I got my own laser range finder in my hands. Its the closest to totally awesome and cool that I come on any project, and I didn't ever do the hard part of the work!