Story Arc

Story Arc

Sometime back in the 70's, I bought a Wondrous Thing, probably from a head shop, or some funky book store. It was a curved lucite prism that you'd hang in a window, and it would project various rainbow patterns in the room. It was called a Spectrarc.

It was made by a guy named Fred DaMert, from Oakland, CA. He cast the first versions of these things in the daytime, while driving a truck to make a living at night.

I usually hang it up in a southern facing window in the winter time, when the low slanting light really fires it up.

It's an old thing, with more than a few nicks from crash landings from pet induced mishaps and monofilament failure, but none bad enough to affect its function.

But I've never seen another one like it, in all these years, and I got to wondering if they were still being made. I found the original packing tube and instruction sheet while cleaning up the other day, and did some web searching...

Come to find out that Fred passed away last year, sadly:
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/marinij/obituary.aspx?n=frederick-allen-damert&pid=175369890

And that he, and his wife, made it into the Big Time, although not without some difficulties:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/19960801/1767.html

But he never apparently succeeded in getting a manufacturer to put his prisms back on the market. It looks like the company eventually went into receivership and was bought by Toysmith.





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