When I was growing up comic book advertisements seemed more entertaining than the super hero adventures or
Richie Rich chuckles that the medium was intended for. I felt like the fascinating world of Sea monkeys and magic trick gadgets held more promise than an imaginary story line that never seemed to prove itself to be even close to believable in my real world.

I had a long list of favorites, but the one that remained on top was the mythical x-ray glasses. I know what you're thinking...male puberty plus x-ray glasses equal a pretty generic boyhood dream. My motivation for such a high functioning device was purely scientific, back when the very thought of girls mysteriously caused me to freeze up and hide.

When I read the x-ray ad, and re-read it over and over the same fantasy would take off in various forms. I would imagine fixing things and learning how they functioned by simply watching them with the amazing glasses. Since the first day I learned how a screwdriver worked I was constantly overwhelmed by the urge to take things apart. It's a hunger I've managed to control on most occasions, especially after learning the hard way that some things don't always go back together the way they were originally meant to be. These super glasses held the promise of better knowing exactly how each part should fit and prevent any future reassembly problems.

It seemed perfectly logical to also use the x-ray spex to make some extra cash. I thought a guy could work a few hours a week in a hospital and make all the money one would need substituting for the x-ray machine.

These days I'd like a pair of glasses that allowed one to examine a few inches below the ground surface. Maybe one could analyze the soil and measure how optimal it is?

I'm not holding my breath for such an invention, but the good people at the Oak ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) have been kind enough to share the secret to the classic x-ray glasses.

Turns out it's an illusion that squashes some feathers between two pieces of cardboard with a 1/4" hole where each eye can see out. When you look through the holes you're also looking through the feathers which diffract the visible light due to the fact that the feathers are so close together. This creates a quasi-impression of an x-ray.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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