The College of Optometrists

Robert Hooke (1635-1703) went up to Christ Church, Oxford in 1653, and is best know to our students of optics for his 1665 work Micrographia, for constructing the first Gregorian telescope, and for designing the iris diaphragm. His dispute with Sir Isaac Newton caused the latter to postpone the publication of his Opticks until after Hooke’s death. An argumentative man, he also disputed with Hevelius about the importance of using telescopic sights for accurate astronomical measurements. In old age Hooke’s eyes were said to be ‘grey and full with a sharp ingenious look’ but in the last year of his life he experienced blindness which was possibly a consequence of diabetes.

 

The importance of Hooke to the ophthalmic optical profession is shown in this detail from a Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers certificate of the 1920s. Alongside a 'modern' binocular microscope is an artistic representation of Hooke's monocular microscope of 1665. Hooke's design was a functional improvement over the traditional tripod, and included its own apparatus for illuminating specimens. Whilst wanting to associate itself with the tradition of the distinguished scientist the Examining Board was also plain in its suggestion that historic developments had brought about progress!

 

We can't show you a portrait of Hooke because none has been authenticated.

 

The image most frequently associated with Hooke is that of the flea, a fascinating if slightly grotesque illustration, some 18 inches wide within the Micrographia, revealing just what could be studied with the aid of microscopical observation...or as Hooke put it:

 

By the addition of such artificial Instruments and methods, there may be, in some manner, a reparation made for the mischiefs, and imperfection, mankind has drawn upon it self

 

Hooke was arguing that the new microscopical technology altered the very way we thought about our sense of sight.

 

As for the actions of our Senses, we cannot but observe them to be in many particulars much outdone by those of other Creatures, and when at best, to be far short of the perfection they seem capable of: And these infirmities of the Senses arise from a double cause, either from the disproportion of the Object to the Organ, whereby an infinite number of things can never enter into them, or else from error in the Perception, that many things, which come within their reach, are not received in a right manner.

 

Hooke used the word 'cell' to describe what he had seen on the surface of a cork, but though a father of modern science it was an artist's eye that he brought to his work. Earlier in life he had been apprenticed to a portrait painter.