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"it slowly dawned on me that the landscape of science is maybe what interests people a great deal in science fiction."
- Gregory Benford

Bifocal TV Screen Lenses  
  Using the bottom lens of bifocals as a TV screen.  

Pretty clever idea; augmented reality enthusiasts, take note.

“Clever of you, Stanton, to notice that I was left-handed and that the proxy was too,” he gasped. “And you guessed my spectacles — ”

“Yes,” Stanton nodded somberly. “I guessed that your spectacles, which looked like ordinary bifocal lenses, actually had one lens which saw through the proxy’s eyes.”

He lifted the thick, queer spectacles from the dying man’s eyes as he spoke. And all saw that from the metal bows of the spectacles, hidden, flesh-colored little wires ran down into the inside of Gum’s jacket.

“The lower lens of those bifocal spectacles,” Stanton explained, “are not really lenses at all, but tiny television receiving screens. They are tuned to the tiny television cameras which were the eyes of the proxy. In this manner, whatever the proxy saw was transmitted by television and reproduced in the small lower lens of Sessue Gurn’s spectacles. He saw in those lens what the proxy saw.”

Stanton reached gently into the dying man’s jacket and brought out a small, super- compact receiver and control-wave transmitter, upon which were switches and gnarled knobs. There was also a sensitive microphone pick-up to transmit Gum's speech to the proxy.

Technovelgy from Doom Over Venus, by Edmond Hamilton.
Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1940
Additional resources -

The "proxy" referred to was a robot man masquerading as a real person.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Doom Over Venus
  More Ideas and Technology by Edmond Hamilton
  Tech news articles related to Doom Over Venus
  Tech news articles related to works by Edmond Hamilton

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