Help identifying a story

[Boris]

I read a book maybe 25 years ago. Its actually a short story.
I don't remember the title of this story or the name of the author. I remember the story pretty well, but I still would like to know who wrote it. Maybe there are more stories from this author that I will enjoy.
Does anybody recognizes this story???


An inventor showed his friend a small cube that he designed. He wasn't even sure what it was for. Just something that he put together. Cube had a hole in it. Each man looked into a whole but sow nothing but some smoke. Then, when inventor was looking into the hole he screamed. His eye was hurt bad. He got angry and took a hot poker and stuck the red-hot end of it into the cube. Few weeks or months have passed. Inventor did loose an eye. Still had no idea what happened. Than a huge eye appeared over northern hemisphere. Than it disappeared. Than the eye of another color appeared in the sky over other parts of the earth. These eye's kept changing, appearing every few days. At one point, one country panicked and lunched a rocket into the eye. The eye disappeared. Both friends didn't talk about it. They knew. When they looked into the cube, they saw the earth of the future. A second they spent looking into the cube. It was hours and hours of the eye sighting in the future. Inventor's eye was damaged by a rocked launched by a panicking military. And then he showed a hot poker into the cube...........

[CD]

I remember a story very similar to this one that I think is from Fredrick Pohl. Then again I too haven't read this in ages.

I'll flip through some of the old collections of short stories and novellas and see if something refreshes my memory circuits!

[Traci]

I don't recognize your story but it does remind me of one I have read that seems similiar. The Time Locker by Henry Kuttner. Maybe he wrote this one too? (view spoiler)[An inventor makes a box that I think shrinks items so they can be stored easier. In the beginning of the story when they open the box a small mouse like creature comes out and one of the characters kills it. (hide spoiler)] The end: (view spoiler)[At the end the character that killed the creature needs to hide in the box. The items shrink because of a time hole deal thing and so it turns out that the creature that was killed was himself from when he hides in the future box. (hide spoiler)]