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Cities Stocks Weather Movies Coupons Travel Blogs Health Horoscope Maps ASIA EUROPE Classifieds Yellow PagesX-Ray Specs are an American novelty item, purported to allow the user to see through or into solid objects. Instead, though, the glasses merely create an optical illusion; no X-rays are involved. The current version is sold under the name X-Ray Spex; an essentially identical product is sold under the name X-Ray Gogs.
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X-Ray Specs consist of an outsized pair of eyeglasses with plastic frames and white cardboard "lenses" printed with concentric red circles, and emblazoned with the legend "X-RAY VISION". They are not designed to be inconspicuous. "Specs" is a truncation of the word spectacles (eyeglasses).
Viewing the "bones" of a hand through X-Ray Specs
The lenses consist of two layers of cardboard with a small hole about 6mm (.25 inch) in diameter punched through both layers. The user views objects through the holes. A feather is embedded between the layers of each lens. The vanes of the feathers are so close together that light is diffracted, causing the user to receive two slightly offset images. For instance, if viewing a pencil, one would see two offset images of the pencil. Where the images overlap, a darker image is obtained, supposedly giving the illusion that one is seeing the graphite embedded within the body of the pencil. As may be imagined, the illusion is not particularly sustainable.X-Ray Specs were long advertised with the slogan "See the bones in your hand, see through clothes!" Some versions of the advertisement featured an illustration of a young man using the X-Ray Specs to examine the bones in his hand while a voluptuous (but fully-dressed) woman stood in the background, as though awaiting her turn to be "x-rayed."
The claim is patently absurd, of course; besides the unlikelihood of a safe and functional x-ray device selling for about a dollar, x-ray detectors require an x-ray source.
Nevertheless, enough customers — intrigued by the salacious possibilities suggested by the slogan "...see through clothes!"http://www.irememberjfk.com/mt/2006/11/xray_specs.html X-Ray Specs page at I Remember JFK — have gambled a dollar or two on the off-chance that Superman\'s similarly sourceless x-ray vision might somehow be obtained through use of the device.http://www.stupid.com/stat/XRAY.html X-Ray Gogs sales catalog page at stupid.com
Part or even most of the novelty value lies in provoking the object of the wearer\'s attentions. These subjects, if unable to be entirely sure that the device did not indeed allow the wearer to compromise their modesty, were liable to respond with a variety of amusing reactions.
X-Ray Specs were invented 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.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia
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