‘All sorts of stuff happens in my little workshop’
When he's not playing guitar for Queen, Brian May PhD is an astronomer and inventor. He talks about his latest gadget - an update on the Victorian stereoscopeBrian May is examining his hands. His fingernails are painted with a futuristic, silvery polish, but it's his fingertips he's focused on. They are, he informs me, covered with soft calluses. It's hardly surprising - he's just flown in from Barcelona, where he's been on tour, thrashing out hits with Queen (with American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert on Freddie duties). But here in London, his guitar is nowhere in sight. Because it's not a gig he's eager to talk about: it's the launch of his latest invention.
Dubbed the "Owl VR Smartphone Kit", his low-tech, adjustable plastic gadget looks like a cross between a kiddie's shoe gauge and Google Cardboard. By attaching a smartphone to the back of its frame, using some tape, a metal plate and a magnet, the device can be used to view 360-degree videos - handy, since Queen are currently filming one of their own. But as May reveals, it can do far more than that. Slot in a card bearing two, almost identical, photographs and when you look through the lenses the image suddenly bounces forth in glorious 3D - a technique known as stereoscopy. With an app, he demonstrates, you can even make 3D versions of your smartphone shots. "This is a proper scientific instrument," he says, with the confidence of a man who has a patent pending.
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