Ever heard of Google Glass? They are the new augmented reality glasses from google, and they look suspiciously like Leonardo da Vinci's glasses designs... but before I investigate that mystery, I will first explain a bit about what these incredible glasses do.
They look a bit like something from a Sci-Fi film, and in a sense they are the kind of thing you would expect to see in futuristic films as they border on technology being controlled by mind power. However, these glasses are actually voice controlled, as well as having small buttons on the side.
The glasses incorporate a camera that includes video, a microphone, GPS, and a Wi-Fi connection. As the website advertises, these glasses are so advanced that you can, for example, simply look at something and say 'take a picture' and the glasses will capture the image before you, as well as having many other functions. Click here to learn more about them!
As well as running on incredible technology that inventors predict will make them more advanced and popular than tablets, computers and mobiles, they are also strong and light, and don't interfere with your vision! They therefore really are the latest gadgets that will make mere mortals have superhuman powers when they soon become available to the public... (sometime in 2014).
But, how are these incredible inventions related to Leonardo da Vinci's glasses? Let's take a look...
Leonardo da Vinci's glasses
Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. Essentially he was a genius, and as a result is known all over the world. Many modern inventions have their roots in Leonardo da Vinci's works, and he is therefore considered to have been hundreds of years ahead of his time.
His incredible insights into the workings of the human body and his work as an anatomist, combined with his knowledge of science, led him to invent what we today call contact lenses - click here for more information about the evolution of this invention. The photo below shows Leonardo da Vinci's sketches of how they work.
As well as this incredibly early design of something many people today wear on a daily basis, there has also been a mystery that has emerged recently about some other sketches which depict Leonardo da Vinci's glasses inventions. The reason for the recent interest in these drawings, is that they show a design that is surprisingly similar to that of Google Glass.
This mystery has been examined by nuclear physicist Dr. Burt Wilde, and although he states that the drawings show only a basic similarity with the Google Glass design, he argues that it is Leonardo da Vinci's glasses notations which are of particular interest. They speak about man being able to see his life and another life or activity transposed on top of that in the form of text - exactly the same idea as Google Glass! (Read a full article about it here).
So, do the foundations for the invention of Google Glass lie in the drawings and notes of Leonardo da Vinci's glasses in the 15th Century? If one considers the other incredible inventions that have been discovered in his sketches, then this idea does not seem too far fetched at all, and only real skeptics would call it a mystery...
I think they suit him! ;)
