June 2009 - View Through a Focimeter
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This month we thought we'd feature one of the images from our extensive collection of photographic slides. These are not catalogued at individual level so it just goes to re-emphasise the importance of getting in touch with us if an image you require cannot be sourced elsewhere. We now have the facility to scan these, though of course the quality of the original transparency is sometimes not the greatest.
Many of the slides were produced for lecture purposes at university optometry departments. This one is a case in point and is part of a set of seventeen slides showing what the practitioner views through the eyepiece of a focimeter. The user has placed a toric lens (as dispensed to people with high degrees of astigmatism) on the holding device within the instrument. The target is as yet unaligned. Photographs like these may one day be important evidence of how optometric equipment worked, not least because health and safety concerns mean that we cannot operate our museum pieces and in most cases the wiring has been cut.
If you want to learn more about the history of focimeters, we have a dedicated web page all about them elsewhere on the MusEYEum site.
N.B. If you are wondering where some of our older 'Objects of the Month' have gone to, we have started to integrate the content we presented about them in other parts of the site.
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