1945
The crudely made booby-trap binoculars
THE ORIGIN OF a pair of binoculars with a spring-loaded spike designed to injure the eyes of a person trying to use them, is not known for certain. It is said that in 1945 a man sent the binoculars as a farewell gift to his former fiancée in Southampton after she had broken off their engagement. They were featured on the poster of Herman Cohen’s 1959 film, Horrors of the Black Museum, and might have been inspired by a similar booby-trapped weapon that appeared in the plot of the 1943 musical Oklahoma! by Rodgers and Hammerstein.