From: Geraint.Jones@comlab.oxford.ac.uk (Geraint Jones)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Seebackascopes
Date: 10 Nov 92 10:01:40 GMT
Organization: The Pontifex Portable Thunderbox and Collapsible Flush Company
Originator: geraint@pierrot.comlab
Comment: Hm.  `spell -b' doesn't know how to spell cornflake

jmb@ukc.ac.uk (Mike Bremner) wrote:
(  One of the contestants on "The News Quiz" at lunchtime (Alan Coren?)
 ) made a passing reference to the Seebackascope (the context, relating to
(  a news item about spies, need not concern us).  
 ) 
(  I had a deprived childhood, and did not own one of these marvels.  Nor,
 ) indeed, did any of my friends.  I suspect that the Seebackascope did not
(  enjoy any great degree of popularity or success.  Is there anyone out
 ) there willing to confess to having possessed one, and to tell us how
(  effective it was?  How well could you see?  How conspicuous were you?

Me, me, me, me, me.  I had a Seebackascope(R), although I keep wanting to call
it a Seeback(r)ascope because that was how the name was printed on the side.
The one I had was a red plastic job with a plastic prism in it (chiz, chiz)
although I think I remember seeing a brass one in one of those High Class Junk
Shop catalogues that came from addresses on the Edgeware Road.  (I used to own
an ex-RAF throat-microphone set, complete with soft leather covers for the
pick-ups, which came from one of those catalogues.  Lasky's, perhaps.  Never
used it for anything, of course.)  I think my seebackascope came either in a
packet of breakfast cereal, or more likely from a catalogue of things you could
get by collecting vast numbers of corners of the lids of packets of breakfast 
cereal.  If you didn't eat the packets, that is.  (What was the original 
`cardboard cut-out'?  Was it really something on the back of a Ceiliog's 
cornflake packet?) It worked, in the sense that you could see behind you, or
rather just see around the side of your head.  You were, of course, as 
conspicuous as anyone who had a great lump of red plastic stuck in their eye.
Yes, it came from a catalogue.  The catalogue had things like trick soap (which
produced dirty suds and stained your hands) and trick playing cards in it.  
Other things that I remember coming from the same sorts of cereal packets at
that period include the stereoscope, for viewing stereo pairs of images -- the
images came in packets of Weetabix and the 'scope had to be sent away for, and
cost some phenomenal sum, like 1/6; and there was a summer when one cereal did
tiny little high-pressure water pistols consisting of just a punch and a die
with pistol-grips.  You loaded them by dunking them in a bucket of water, and
if you didn't mind damp pockets you could carry eight or nine loaded ones in
a standard-issue trouser pocket.  They were magic.  Where did I get the pack
of tiny (1"x3/4" or thereabouts) playing cards for playing patience?  Ah, and
there were little plastic bows and arrows, about 1/20th scale long-bows for 
which you had to provide the elastic band.  God.  Bluebottle must have used   /
those.  I wonder whether the seebackascope is still in the top of one of     /
the cupboards in my mother's house.                                         / g
___
There is a shiny patch on one of the hinges of my 
glasses which works quite well as a seebackascope.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british