It’s usually stunning how a sight, scent or perhaps a sound can take the thoughts again to one thing skilled a few years beforehand. This occurred to me just lately once I noticed what I later discovered had been referred to as Mattress Prisms Spectacles. These are also referred to as Mattress Studying Glasses. They’re the oddest wanting spectacles you may think about. They jogged my memory of a TV program I noticed a few years in the past.This TV program confirmed an experiment the like of which, at the moment, was actually astounding! The experiment was to see how the human thoughts may adapt itself to having the whole lot it noticed INVERTED or the wrong way up! Think about that. The sky can be down and the bottom can be up the place the clouds must be.Now, this wasn’t a fast ‘Strive these on for a couple of minutes’ kind of experiment. It really entailed the courageous volunteer sporting a pair of the craziest wanting spectacles for a number of weeks throughout all his waking hours.They consisted of mirrors fitted to a heavy spectacle body which turned the whole lot he noticed the wrong way up. They had been very heavy and cumbersome however the ‘guinea pig’ persevered and stored them on at any time when he was awake for a lot of days, as required by the scientists.After just a few days of bumping into issues, falling over and usually having a not very good time the volunteer started to maneuver round his world with out an excessive amount of problem and will do nearly the whole lot that he did earlier than. His mind had tailored itself to this new view of the world! It had successfully ‘rewired’ itself to deal with the brand new info it was receiving from his eyes. The mind is an incredible factor, is not it?
When the experiment had efficiently run its course, the world-inverting spectacles had been faraway from the plucky volunteer. Sadly issues did not return to regular for him right away. In reality he discovered that with out the spectacles the whole lot appeared the wrong way up as soon as once more. It took a number of extra days for his mind to regulate itself again to regular imaginative and prescient as soon as extra. It will need to have been a really traumatic expertise for him.What had put me in thoughts of this, hopefully very helpful and helpful experiment, was one thing I hadn’t seen earlier than, however which I assumed may very well be very helpful in sure circumstances. It was a pair of spectacles, like those that turned the world the wrong way up for the brave volunteer, however a lot lighter and smaller and which used small prisms as a substitute of heavy glass mirrors.Why, it’s possible you’ll ask, would anybody volunteer to put on such ‘devices of torture’, not to mention exit and purchase a pair? Effectively, it turned out that whereas not utterly inverting the whole lot the wearer sees they solely flip their view downwards by ninety levels.So whereas wanting straight forward they’d see, not the horizon and the whole lot earlier than it, however their toes. Useful to verify that my shoelaces had been nonetheless completed up, I assumed.However what had been they actually for? Their actual function, it seems, is much more sensible and definitely very rather more helpful than considering one’s toenails. They’re for studying a ebook or watching a TV while mendacity down.They’re referred to as ‘Mattress Prism Spectacles’, and because the identify suggests, they’re to be used when studying or TV viewing and when mendacity down in mattress. On this place and with the pinnacle at a snug and extra pure angle, and never bent forwards, it’s doable to learn a ebook or watch the bed room TV in consolation.The prisms within the spectacles change the viewing angle by round 90 levels. The ebook or TV then seems, to the viewer, to be instantly above them and virtually on the ceiling!What a fantastic thought. No extra ache within the neck and fatigue. No extra arms aching via holding a heavy ebook, or a Kindle maybe, above one’s face. Carrying a pair of those Mattress Prism Spectacles means you may watch TV for so long as you needed with out discomfort – or till you dozed off.
Studying a newspaper in mattress can also be sensible and definitely extra snug than both sitting propped up or mendacity down and holding the newspaper above your head. It’s virtually not possible to cease it collapsing and falling down over your face, making bedtime newspaper studying a little bit of a problem. With out the Mattress Studying Glasses you would need to sit up to do that.For somebody who’s bed-ridden or who has to spend quite a lot of time in mattress for medical causes, these mattress studying glasses can be an actual boon. They’d allow the affected person to observe TV or learn books with out the discomfort of sitting up or having to carry the ebook aloft.So, possibly these weird wanting spectacles aren’t fairly so loopy in any case. They actually do make bedtime studying and TV viewing whereas mendacity comfortably in mattress, not simply doable, but in addition a extra pleasurable expertise.However whether or not the concept for them got here from that ‘turning the world the wrong way up’ experiment of way back I do not know. However it actually makes me marvel.
