The College of Optometrists

Lectures and talks

 

The Museum Curator is available to give lectures to academic conferences and/or informal groups. On this page you can read feature articles based on past lectures (adapted for publication on the web). Recent lectures include:

• Chemist-Opticians
  - To the British Society for the History of Pharmacy
• Artificial Eyes and the Artificialisation of the Human Face
  - To the Society for the Social History of Medicine
• Documenting collections
  - To the Ophthalmic Antiques International Collectors' Club
• The Tyranny of Treatment - Eyecare and Eyewear in the age of Dr Johnson
  - Public talk at the Dr Johnson's House Museum - To the British Society for the History of Pharmacy
• Identifying ophthalmic museum objects
  - To the Social History Curators Group
• What's in a name? - What is and What was an Optician?
  - To the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Society (28 October 2005)
• What's in a name? - What is and What was an Optician?
  - Repeated to the Ashridge Circle (12 April 2006)
• More than "A Blessing to the Aged" - The Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers
  - At the Mini Conference on the London Guilds: Scientific Instrument Society and the Worshipful Society of Scientific Instrument Makers (4 July 2008)

• Cosmetic Contact Lenses - From Protective Shells to Cat's Eyes
  - At the Conference  on The Body: Simulacra and Simulation - Models, Prosthetics and Interventions, XIV Congress of the European Association of Museums of the History of Medical Sciences, Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (18 September 2008) 

 

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Group Visits

 

The museum's Meeting Room Tours also include a curator's talk. Groups to have visited the museum recently include:

• Ophthalmic Antiques International Collectors' Club
• Plastics Historical Society
• Lycée Victor Bérard, Morez (France)
• The Georgian Group
• Scientific Instrument Society
• University of the Third Age
• The Ashridge Circle
• Highams Park City Technology College (AS Level Physics)
• The Naborhood Daycare Centre (Adults with learning disabilities)
• The Nulife Centre
• Association of Independent Optometrists
• League of Excellence Tutorial College
• The London Friendship Centre
• Havering Adult College
• Barnet College
• Sparta History Society
• Johnson & Johnson Visioncare
• London Explorers
• Austrian Embassy Commercial Section - Delegation of Austrian optometrists
• ORBIS 

For more information on booking tours see our visiting pages.

 

 

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Events

 

The Museum sometimes has a presence at external heritage events where we may take pictorial display boards, objects and demonstration items. Plus, every September we take part in the Open House London series of architectural open days.

 

Recent events have included:

• Syon House Medieval Archaeology Day
• Who Do You Think You Are? ancestry and history event
• Guided tour of the Hunterian Museum with particular emphasis on scientific instruments
• Guided tour of the Science Museum with particular emphasis on ophthalmic and eye-related exhibits
• Four Liveries Lecture (12 May 2008) - Did you see our telescope there?

We also participate in events held under the umbrella of the London Museums of Health and Medicine including the regular 'London Maze' local history and archives events.

 

 

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Press and Media Coverage

 

The Curator is also readily available for press and tv/radio interviews on matters directly pertaining to the HISTORY of the subject. (On other matters please contact the College Press Office).

 

 

Recent broadcast media coverage has included:

• CBC Radio (Canada) Bunny Watson Show. The curator was interviewed by Bill Richardson about the eighteenth century itinerant oculist and quack John Taylor, whose botched cataract operations ruined the sight of both Bach and Handel.
• Discovery Channel. The BOA collections were used for a three-minute programme spacer on the History of Spectacles.
• BBC Radio 4. Morning With Snow. Inspired by a newspaper cutting from 1694, Peter Snow visited the museum to look at seventeenth century eyewear and learn about John Yarwell who pioneered automated lens production.
• BBC Radio 4. Inventors Imperfect. Adam Hart-Davis called on the College to review the shaky evidence that Benjamin Franklin actually invented bifocals.
• BBC World Service 'Outlook'. Anne Khazam visited the museum to try on some monocles and was surprised to discover their popularity as a fashion item for young American women around 1900.
• ITV London 'Off the Beaten Track'. Nigel Farrell entered 'The World of Eyeballs', visited the Print Room, tried out a test-your-sight machine, colour-matched an artificial eye and re-enacted the discovery of our Scarlett-type spectacles.

(We have videos or audio-recordings of these programmes available for viewing or listening).