Chus Martinez On X-Ray Spex!
Posted: October 29, 2012 Filed under: Chus Martinez, novelty, nudity | Tags: art, art project, chus martinez, novelty, nudity, peeping tom, X-Ray Spex 7 Comments
X-Ray Spex are an American novelty item, purported to allow the user to see through or into solid objects. In reality 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. X-Ray Spex consist of an outsized pair of glasses with plastic frames and white cardboard “lenses” printed with concentric red circles, and emblazoned with the legend “X-RAY VISION”.
The lenses consist of two layers of cardboard with a small hole about 6 mm (.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, 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. The illusion is not sustainable.
X-Ray Spex 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 Spex to examine the bones in his hand while a voluptuous woman stood in the background, as though awaiting her turn to be “X-rayed.”
The claim is untrue, 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. Part or even most of the novelty value lies in provoking the object of the wearer’s attentions. These subjects, if convinced the device worked, or at least unsure whether or not it allowed the wearer to see them nude, might respond in an amusing way.
There is now an app that claims to do the same thing X-Ray Spex were alleged to do, but with a mobile phone camera.
Chus Martinez 
I never leave home without my x-ray specs. Of course, people don’t need a pair to see what I’ve got under my clothes. As a dedicated Communudist, I don’t wear clothes!
Yes if everyone went nude it would totally undermine the capitalist system since not only would people not buy novelty items like X-ray spex, they wouldn’t be buying clothes either! We’d be beating that capitalist economy until it really hurt the exploiters!
Err, don’t thinks so. Surely people would be buying spex/goggles and augmented reality apps to see (most people) with clothes (/fig leaves) on!
Well let’s get everyone in the world to go nude and then we’ll see whether I’m right or you’re right….
I remember these X ray specs advertised in the back of comics but the price was always in dollars. I was a nine year old boy living in the UK who was desperate to see if they worked on Sticky Vicky the problem was I had no idea where I could lay my hands on dollars.
I used to lust after some of those novelty items in American comics when I was that age too but never knew how to get them. The best I could do was a novelty charm from Thames Ditton on the outskirts of London advertised with slogan: “Rub the Buddha for money….”
lol.