One inventor is being hailed as the hero of concert and performance lovers everywhere with his latest invention designed with the vertically challenged in mind.
Dominic Wilcox, a UK-based inventor and designer, is changing the entertainment experience for short people the world over with his funky looking periscope glasses.
Coined as the “One Foot Taller” glasses, this latest invention solves the problem of shorter folk by allowing them to see well above the heads of even the tallest gig attendees, allowing for a better entertainment experience for everyone involved.
Indeed, wearers of the periscope glasses won’t even notice the next giant to step into their line of vision, as they will have the best view in the house from just about every angle from below the stage.
The glasses themselves are true to their name, as they stand at a grand total of one foot tall (roughly 30.5 cm). This allows an extra 12″ of height to be added to the wearer’s vision, exponentially improving how well they can see whatever is before them.
Although these periscope glasses may look like a joke, their usefulness is undeniably real, and genius to boot.
The glasses themselves are fashioned from a single sheet of mirrored acrylic for optimal clarity. The acrylic is bent at a perfectly precise angle so that whatever vision the top piece captures can easily be reflected in the smaller flip out mirrors attached to the front frame of the glasses.
As many inventions do, the periscope glasses came about as a solution to a common, everyday problem for a large number of people.
Wilcox explains how his idea to attach mirrors and add length to your standard eyewear evolved in his mind while he was attending a concert. The tall, 6-foot-plus engineer realized how difficult it is for a short person to get a good view of whatever gig it is that they are trying to watch when he caught a stranger straining to catch a glimpse at the stage at a performance.
“I was standing at a gig and turned to see a small woman dancing away but unable to see the band. This gave me the inspiration to design a way for people to see over obstacles such as tall people like me,” the clever inventor writes on his website.
The forward-thinking inventor was moved to design an invention that would have a large impact on people in common everyday circumstances so he could present it at London’s D&AD Festival in the exhibit: Extraordinary Solutions to Everyday Problems.
The event showcases some of the finest talents in design, art, film, fashion, and advertising, to name only a few.
The festival displays such talents with a particular eye towards “celebrating the world’s best in craft, creativity and culture”.
According to Wilcox’s website, he was initially challenged to answer the call of the exhibit by Microsoft Surface, and this isn’t the only invention he has allowed himself to become impassioned with creating in order to solve a mass conundrum.
The eccentric inventor also came up with “The Directing Jacket”. In case you’re wondering, it is not a jacket for film directors. Rather, it solves the pedestrian problem of not knowing which side of the path to pass someone by on. Soft buttons sewn into the jacket cuff can be pressed to light up either a “left” or “right” green arrow to indicate to an oncoming pedestrian which side you would like to be passed on.
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When asked what drives the genius inventor to try to solve so many of the world’s “problems” in an interview with The Mirror, Wilcox explains that it is all about being able to manipulate some of his creativity into actionable designs.
“Some people get their thrills from bungee jumping or scoring a winning goal at Wembley, but I get mine from coming up with creative ideas. Creativity is important because the world has many problems and challenges, and we need a lot more people with creative solutions to solve them,” he states.
The positive minded inventor goes on to assert that creativity is not a rare phenomenon sparingly dispersed throughout the human race, but rather a skill to be learned and then expounded upon through inspiration and follow-through.
“I think that everyone can become more creative and increase their ability to think up new ideas. Creativity is just a particular way of thinking that can be learned and practised like any other skill. Some of my ideas develop from observations on human behaviour and I express them through the objects I create,” he urges.
While we’re not sure how many short-stacks we’ll see brandishing these periscope glasses at the next big show, we are sure about one thing; Dominic Wilcox is an inspiration to young creatives everywhere!
