It's entirely possible that Mike Brown overdosed on ADD meds: These brass goggles scream "attention to detail". And they're frickin' awesome.

Some numbers: The leather is actually bolted to the eyepieces, using 48 tiny bolts plus another four for the nosepiece. The leather was chosen for the tanning process which should give it a klife of a few thousand years.

Ditto the eyepieces, which are machines from titanium and coated with Titanium Nitride. Predicted lifespan: 500 years plus. There are even brass eyelets in the leather eyecups to stop the lenses steaming up.

Mike put in a few nice extras, too. The sliders in each eyepiece close the leaf-apertures inside, which will cut out light and also sharpen your eyesight, just like a pinhole camera. The lenses themselves react to light and get darker the brighter it is.

Want to buy them? You can't, unless you have a lot of cash lying around. Titanium doesn't come cheap:

To put things in perspective, Titanium wedding rings go for around $900-$2000 in the U.S. so these were not cheap to make. I won't be making any big purchases anytime in the near future.

Check out the full gallery, and marvel at one man's obsession to make a beautiful object that will outlive him by hundreds of years.

Project page [Smugmug. thanks, Mike!]