History
The principle behind the illusion was first patented in 1909 by Fred J. Wiedenbeck (Patent #914904)
X-Ray Specs were improved (Patent# 3592533) by Harold von Braunhut, also the inventor of Amazing Sea-Monkeys.
A previous product called the Wonder Tube worked in a similar way. Instead of glasses, the device was in the form of a small telescope.
Their name was used as the inspiration for the UK punk band The X-Ray Spex.
Read more about this topic: X-Ray Specs (novelty)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)