Rings, cloaks, other devices and potions that render the wearer invisible have long featured in
myths,
fairy tales and
role playing games. The concept of
invisibility has also been explored in several movies, many of them comedies.
Less exotically, invisibility can be achieved, or at least approximated, by camouflage.
Examples of invisibility devices in fiction:
- The ring of Gyges, described in a story in Plato's Republic. A peasant finds a ring in the tomb of a dead king which allows him to become invisible at will. Plato has him enter the palace, seduce the queen, and plot to kill the king, arguing that power, such as this, corrupts absolutely.
- The hero Perseus went equipped with a helmet of invisibility to kill Medusa.
- The Invisible Man (1897) by H. G. Wells is a well-known novel about invisibility.
- One function of the One Ring in J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series was to render the user invisible. Unfortunately, it had an evil influence with negative effects on the wearer's sanity.
- The Philadelphia Experiment, a project to make a ship invisible.
- The Harry Potter series featured a cloak of invisibility that, when worn, makes the covered body parts, including the clothing beneath the cloak, the cloak itself and perhaps also the contents of the pockets, invisible. As a result only the head, hands and feet are visible, and they seem disconnected from each other.
- In comic books, there are superheroes like the Invisible Woman that have the power to become invisible at will as well as wizards like Doctor Strange who have invisibility spells in their possession.
- Douglas Adams proposed the Somebody Else's Problem field in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
External links:
info on "stealth suit" (
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4199601,00.html),
[1] (
http://members.aol.com/doder1/invisib1.htm)
Lower visibility for
radar is called
stealth technology[?].