according to the wikipedia article it's a surface of micro-mirrors that work in pairs. so it's basically a pair of mirrors scaled down and repeated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-reversing_mirror

not very exciting really.

No, that is not what Prof. Hicks made. His mirror is a single curved piece.

Source: I am a former undergrad research assistant of his.

huh. thanks. so that's the second type listed at wikipedia? or am i confused? perhaps you or he could fix / clarify the wikipedia article? i guess i could but it feels odd to do it third-hand...

I wish I could give you a link to one of Prof. Hicks's published papers on the topic, but I'm having trouble finding one that isn't behind a paywall. This seems like a nice introduction: http://www.math.drexel.edu/~ahicks/papers/physics-today.pdf

If you have access to journals through a university, you could take a look at some of his papers yourself (His website is http://www.math.drexel.edu/~ahicks/). They're easy enough for a sophomore to recreate the results. (I know, because I did for an independent study with Prof. Hicks.)

I imagine the hard part is actually optimizing that array of mirrors.

Here's the patent http://www.google.com/patents/US8180606 but it doesn't mean much to me.

This patent is not for the non-reversing mirror but for another type of mirror which was invented earlier.

Oh sorry, yep, you're right

The thing was around in 2009. This particular article is about an art exhibit that involves the mirror.