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Here I present The Nothing Box that switches itself off. This is my favourite thing. It is the best joke.

This is the original one made as The Little Black Box. A long, long time later this brilliant idea was taken and weakened by making the hand 'snatch' a coin from a slot. Yes, they made it into a boring money box. These were sold everywhere as Coin Snatchers and sometimes with skeleton hands for not very spooky effect. It is really hard to find this original paradoxical version of pure comic genius from the very early 1960s.

The internet has spawned a whole switcheroo of Nothing Boxes, but this is the one. If you find one, celebrate. Oh and notice how this first model wriggles up from the table and from side-to-side. That's pretty nice. You can see the action when I put it on the glass surface.

Creator of the communications satellite, science seer, author of the book and the film '2001 A Space Odyssey' Arthur C. Clarke saw this box. He wrote, "There is something unspeakably sinister about a machine that does nothing—absolutely nothing—except switch itself off"

Philosophers love this box and argue about it. What does the tuning off off and is it off when it's off and on when it's on or on when it's off? Yes, they get paid to talk like that. But with philosophers loving this thing, you should be completely turned on. Well, shouldn't you? Oh, off with you!

The film above is a from a gallery-based Conceptual Art video by fine artist Tony Wood.

This is the advertisement for the 
first Don Poynter novelty box.