Glasses direct blog

What do Superman, Harry Potter, and Pokeman all have in common? All titles featured X-ray glasses in them, which are recognised as a figment of comic-book writers and children’s imagination- up till now.

An American company, ‘Advanced Intelligence’ claims to have designed a pair of X ray glasses that allow the user to see, in real-time (and record if needed), ‘…through some type of materials making it possible to see through clothes that in the same condition cannot be seen by the naked eye.’ From this quote and the look of their website, clearly the inventor has a certain rather lurid, and probably illegal, type of use in mind that would never have crossed Harry Potter’s mind.

I suspect that this is a sham load of tosh but we havent tried these glasses and cant vouch for whether they do or dont work. At $2,400 a pop we’re sure you probably won’t take a gamble to find out either. And as for how advanced, Advanced Intelligence’s technology really is, what they’re selling at the moment doesn’t look like the kind of rocket science you’d expect if and when the real deal is invented.

X-ray vision is in the news a lot at the moment. The full body scanners currently being trialled at some airports to enhance security on flights, according to the BBC, ‘work by beaming electromagnetic waves on to passengers while they stand in a booth. A virtual three-dimensional image is then created from the reflected energy.’ They cost about £80,000 each and are developed by Qinetiq.

If you know of any other examples of this kind of technology, or have actually tried a pair of the ‘x-ray glasses’, do let us know what you think below.

Recently featured in Wired magazine, you will need a microscope to see these glasses. This is a 2mm frames sporting a 0.1mm logo, seen here pictured on a house-fly. The logo is the equivalent size of a human hair, and was lazered onto the frames using, from a stationary machine, whilst the frames were moved around using a positioning machine.

Looks as though this was a warm-up act by German company Micreon for their next trick: to engrave tiny lettering onto watch faces. Reminds me of the artist Willard Wigan, who creates sculptures too small for the human eye to see. One of his works that I saw was set on a plinth which was the eye of a needle, and the sculpture itself was of a ship whose ropes were made out of spiders web strands. He gives a fascinating talk here.

We’ll be sticking to the day job of choosing the best styles and designs that suit your eyes and wardrobe, which means you probably won’t find these bug-eyed glasses at Glasses Direct for the foreseeable future