Visual optics

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.