Television Eyeglasses - Text 2
In 1936 Hugo Gernsback, in an editorial in Short Wave Craft, one of his amateur magazines,[1] discussed for the first time his idea of “television eyeglasses”:
Indeed, the time will come when you will sit in the full sunlight and enjoy the finest television programs. You will use a tiny television receiver placed right on your very nose – a device which I term “television eyeglasses.” These will be regulation eyeglasses, but instead of having the normal lenses, they will have a small projection of one or two inches which will house the entire television receiver. There will be two such receivers working in unison, giving you thereby a stereoptical [sic] television view. Attached to the eyeglasses will be a tiny earpiece fitting right inside your ear. The future device thus will give you sight and sound, the entire apparatus not weighing more than four or five ounces. With this device, you can sit in plain daylight or darkness and enjoy the world’s best television programs to your heart’s content.[2]
Gernsback mentioned this idea again in another of his magazines, Radio-Electronics, in 1949, this time giving it a portmanteau name. In an article at once historic and futuristic entitled “40 Years of Television,” accompanied by a fine illustration, he wrote:
The teleyglasses [sic] are merely two tiny, lightweight cathode-ray tubes with two controls for sharpening and properly adjusting the images. We have the technical means today to make teleyglasses – it should not be many years before they are on the market.[3]
In this version, however, the eyeglasses were conceived as an accessory and remained connected to a television set:
Television eyeglasses of the future are an adjunct to the regulation television set. A number of such eyeglasses can be plugged into the set... They are what an extra speaker or headset is to radio set. They will NOT be – at least for years to come – a complete self-contained television receiver.[4]
Finally, in 1963, for an article devoted to him in Life magazine, Gernsback had a prototype of his television eyeglasses built and wore them for the photographer, who shot a famous picture of him. This model, however, was still not functional.[5]
