logologo-optometry

Visual optics

Catalogue Number: 1716
Visual optics
Category: Book
Sub-Category: Book of historical note
Author: EMSLEY H H
Year Of Publication/Manufacture: 1939
Edition: 2nd Edition
Time Period: 1900 to 1939
Place Of Publication/Manufacture: London
Publisher/Manufacturer: Hatton Press Ltd
Description Of Item: Original brown cloth, 639 pages, illustrations and supplement of advertisements. Presentation label stuck down on front fly leaf reading 'Presented by the Victorian Optical Association to Lieut R. Hogan, as an appreciation of his services (as Secretary of the National Optical Council) covering formation of Optial (sic) Army Units etc. President (signed) (F?) Werner Secretary (signed) H Latimer'
Historical Significance: This book was a very influential text book for optometry students from 1936 until the early 1960s. It covers an outline of the eye and vision, visual acuity, refractive errors, accommodation and convergence, ophthalmoscopy, retinoscopy, keratometry, 5 chapters on binocular vision and the two last chapters on the schematic eye and the aberrations of the eye. Emsley was Head of the Applied Optics Department in the Northhampton Polytechnic within which an optometry course was taught, although the Polytechnic has now become City University and the Department is the Department of Optometry and Visual Science. The first edition was published in 1936. Emsley was a physicist, not an optometrist, and held a BSc degree. The book tends to be quantitative although there is no hard maths. Editions held by the Kett Museum are: 1st 1936 Cat No 108, 2nd 1939 Cat No 564 (2 copies), 3rd 1944 Cat No 1944, 4th 1950 Cat No 100 and 5th 1955 Cat No 566. Hogan was active in professional affairs and unusually held officer rank in the army during world war 2. Optometrists served in the medical corps during this war but usually as spectacle makers and refractionists and held only NCO rank. Hogan held an officer rank, which is of interest. See also Cat No 893 'Army and optometrists.( Optometry in World War 2)' and Cat No 1473 'An optometrist's war, 1940 - 1945' for more information about optometrists in World War 2.
How Acquired: Donated by Hogan family via Peter Dwyer
Date Acquired: Nov 2010
Condition: Good
Location: Archive room. East wall. Books of historical note

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