Looking Through a Solid Brick
Avery common exhibition by street showmen, and one which never fails to excite surprise and draw a crowd, is the apparatus by which a person is apparently enabled to look through a brick. Mounted on a simple-looking stand are a couple of tubes which look like a telescope cut in two in the middle. Looking through what most people take for a telescope, we are not surprised when we see clearly the people, buildings, trees, etc., beyond it, but this natural expectation is turned into the most startled surprise when it is found that the view of these objects is not cut off by placing a common brick between the two parts of the telescope and directly in the apparent line of vision, as shown in the accompanying illustration, Fig. 34.
In truth, however, the observer looks round the brick instead of through it, and this he is enabled to do by means of four mirrors ingeniously arranged as shown in the engraving. As the mirrors and the lower connecting tube are concealed, and the upright tubes supporting the pretended telescope, though hollow, appear to be solid, it is not very easy for those who are not in the secret to discover the trick.
Of course any number of “fake” explanations are given by the showman who always manages to keep up with the times and exploit the latest mystery. At one time it was psychic force, then Roentgen or X-rays; lately it has been attributed to the mysterious effects of radium!
This illustration is more properly a delusion; there is no illusion about it.