Joel-o-scope

Joel clocks in well above six foot. One of his friends is a woman in the neighborhood of five foot four. I am a little fuzzy on the details but apparently Joel had a running joke that he would build here a Joel-o-scope so she could see the world from his perspective. Or possibly it was the other way around. So when Joel came to visit me in LA we spent a day building a Joel-o-scope!

The cool thing about this was that looking in from Joel's height gave him a view of the world from his friend's perspective, just as looking in from her height would give him a view of the world from her perspective. Apparently it really was starling for Joel, since he was suddenly not able to see over dividers, plants blocked his field of view, and the same room looked generally very different. I tried it to see what the world looked like for my nephew and was similarly startled. All in all - a fun visit and a very simple but fun project in perspective.

I had access to a laser cutter at the time - so we made a trip to McMaster Car will call (engineering Mecca) for sheet goods and then knocked out a tabbed design. McMaster is based in LA and we have both been buying parts from there for decades. So it really was a weird customer loyalty pilgrimage.

We did cut a final version of the scope from plastic, the version pictured here was the cardboard prototype we cut to test the design. We did not have time to assemble the plastic version, as Joel had to get to the airport.