Before I am bombarded in a hail of "Baked!"s please show me some proof that the item I describe is available as described.

Here's the scenario...your up late and the loved one has gone to bed. You climb into bed and know for sure your head is going to get bitten off if you turn on the light to read. You reach over to the nightstand and put on your reading glasses and continue reading the book you were working on the night before.

Your reading glasses are a mask (either hard-shelled like regular glasses or soft-shelled like a sleeping mask) which fit snugly over the eyes and display an image of a book. This virtual book should be turned to the last page you left off at. Pages can be flipped backwards and forward via a hands-free method, by glancing into the far upper left hand or far upper right hand corners of the viewing area, or by clicking one of two buttons (forward or back) on the temple of the hard-shelled glasses.

Books are loaded into your reading glasses via a wireless networking protocol and are stored on the household information appliance be it PC, Gaming Console or Home Entertainment Center.

Your reading glasses are highly portable and can be carried with you for reading in the car or hotel room. Reading glasses can also double as regular prescription glasses with lenses that turn transparent for normal daily viewing or opaque when in reading mode.

Enjoy your new reading glasses!
-- dgeiser13, May 26 2001

Why not just jack these up to record audio track and display talking heads or performing acts? That way you can watch TV or MTV and not disturb your other half.
-- reensure, May 26 2001


It's Two! Two! Two! "Wouldn't it be neat if"s in one! <grin>

Use low-light goggles and a normal book. Use infrared goggles, an IR LED, and a normal book. <IR sources show up as light blue to digital cameras, might not even need the IR goggles.>

Voted against because of 'reading in the car'.
-- StarChaser, May 26 2001


StarChaser: So if you're riding along in the car with someone else driving you have a problem with people reading?
-- dgeiser13, May 26 2001


Alternatively you could try a Walkman, a pair of earphones and an audio book, all of which are currently available.
-- DrBob, May 26 2001


If they're driving, yes.
-- StarChaser, May 26 2001


StarChaser: Of course I wouldn't recommend using these while driving. Did I say that?

And what exactly makes these WIBNI? I'm talking about something serious here. And I don't think it would be too outrageous to take some existing technologies and make a pair of these.

it basically comes down to some sort of storage device to hold the information, some sort of display device on which to display the information and a battery to power the storage and display of said information. Is there some sort of blue sky component I'm not taking into account here?
-- dgeiser13, May 26 2001


I've never understood how one can focus on something as close to the eyeball as the lenses of a pair of glasses. But other than that these Reading Glasses seem an awful lot like regular virtual reality goggles (of course I'm talking through my beanie to some degree since I've never used VR goggles).
-- Dog Ed, May 26 2001


Dgeiser13, you said "carried with you for reading in the car".

I actually meant Rods_Tiger's annotation was two 'wouldn't it be neat if's, not your idea...I wouldn't buy them, but think it's a neat idea anyway.

The displays are baked, as there are TV and computer monitor goggles about, the storage device is at least baking if not baked <MP3 player type thing>, and batteries have been baked for thousands of years. The problem is, I think, putting them together in a small enough format to be goggles/glasses without them weighing a ton and pulling people's faces off.

Dog_Ed: When it's done correctly, the image that each eyeball sees seems to be floating in space at a distance from your eyes, so you're actually focusing 10' away...it's just that the display is not that far.
-- StarChaser, May 27 2001



random, halfbakery