While working at the polls last Tuesday a man came through the line with a peculiar item attached to his eyeglasses. The glasses were normal in size (typical of what an older man would wear.) Attached to the front of the glasses was a black, oblong object about one-quarter inch by half an inch by six inches. It was attached near the top of the lenses with its long dimension running parallel to the top “crosspiece” of the glasses. The quarter-inch by six-inch face of the device abutted the front of the glasses. On one side (the wearer’s right), there was a little rectangular area on the face of the device facing away from the wearer. This area, about one-quarter by three-quarters of an inch, looked like it was transparent, like a viewfinder on a camera, but may have just been a different (glossy) shade of black. The whole device looked like it was mounted too high on the glasses to be useful as something to see through, and the little transparent rectangle was not centered over either of the wearer’s eyes. Except for the little rectangle, I saw no distinguishing marks on it.
Does anyone know what this device might be? I thought maybe it was a retractable close-up viewing lens of some sort, but thats just a wild guess. And I thought they had bifocals and/or reading glasses for that purpose.
I went to a computer users group meeting a while ago and saw a demo of a couple eyeglass-mounted computer monitors. One of them had a prism/mirror centered in the lens which reflected the monitor image from the side. It’s probably as hard for me to describe this answer as it was for you to describe the question. I’ll see if I can track down a diagram or something through the users group. Did you notice a cord connected to the glasses, and did the guy look like the techno-trendy, early-adopter type?
No cords were visible. It wasn’t one of those little rear-view mirrors that cyclists wear. This object was centered over the glasses; it didn’t stick out to one side like a rear-view mirror. Plus, the guy wearing it was quite old and was having difficulty walking, so bicycling would be out of the question. So, too, would be any sort of video display. “Early-adopter” would not be a term I’d use to describe this fellow.
The swing-down magnifying glass that AWB suggested may be it (as I speculated in my original post), but the lens would be pretty darned small. Then again, perhaps you keep the lens in your pocket and clip it into the top part when you need it.
It sounds to my like a visor of some sort. I’ve seen older people wearing this sort of thing on their glasses. It shades glare from the sun anytime the sun is above, say, a forty degree angle in the sky, but without the problems that come with sunglasses (i.e. low light and, therefore, decreased sight, which might be crucial for an older man.)