The Stoco-Oldfield Lap Cutter, 1919

In 1900, most eyewear was produced in finished form by a manufacturer and purchased ready-to-wear from sellers in hardware, drug, jewelry, and optical stores. In rural areas, itinerant peddlers still traveled from town to town and farm to farm selling eyeglasses.

However the glasses were sold, the wearer's correction was determined mostly by trying on pairs until one provided reasonable vision. Since most fabrication took place at the factory, there were few refractionists and few optical labs.

In 1900, opticians were found mostly in optical shops and jewelry stores. Some had equipment to edge uncut stock lenses. Wholesalers carried finished stock lenses, often already edged to simple oval shapes found in most frames and mountings. As refracting opticians -- soon to change their name to optometrists -- became more skilled, there was a need for a wider range of lenses for the prescriptions their newly developed refracting talents produced. Thus, as the 20th century began, the need arose for custom eyeglasses with lenses made to the patient's individual needs and for wholesale laboratories to produce them.

Here's a look at the evolution of equipment and how the changes helped labs and the professions take shape.

Lab Machinery

Who at Sutherlin Optical's Kansas City lab in the 1950s (above) could have imagined color-coordinated edgers? Santinelli International's LE-9000, below, launched in 1999.

Initially, lab machinery used foot pedal power, much like pre-electric sewing machines -- an advance over the water, steam, and even animal power that had been used in lens factories. This new electrical power was direct current and turned huge motors connected by overhead pulleys and leather belts to machines all over the lab. The noise of those belts slapping and turning was horrendous. This continued until the 1940s when individual motors began to be used.

Lens Surfacing

Sphere and cylinder lenses were produced in hand pans. Operators accomplished this by holding the lens (mounted with pitch on a metal lens block) with a point fastened to the middle of a "poker arm" positioned over a revolving tool. The back curve was roughly shaped, using a highly abrasive powder. For a cylinder surface, the spherical curve was first shaped. Then, using a second tool that matched the desired cross curve, the lens was held in place by holding ears projecting from the lens block, and the operator would "rock" in the cylinder and produce a second cross curve. It took a trained eye and years of experience to "rock in" cylinders with any degree of accuracy.

Cylinder Machines

Five years before the turn of the century, the first semi-automatic cylinder machine -- which fined and polished cylinder surfaces with a figure-8 motion -- was developed by Anton Wagner, who worked for John Borsch, inventor of the original cemented Kryptok bifocal. Wagner's new machine made it possible for labs to produce cylindrical lenses, though their initial use was confined to those few refractionists who understood astigmatism.

Standard Optical (later Shuron) produced an "automated" cylinder machine in 1901. It required operators to stand in front of the machine and continuously paint lens and tool with emery or polishing compound. A good cylinder man could keep eight machines in action and looked like Fred Astaire as he danced up and down in front of his bank of machines.

Shortly before World War II, automated cylinder and sphere polishers were developed that used slurry (watery compound of fining or polishing agents) delivered automatically to lenses by pumps or scoops that flushed slurry from the bottom of the bowl as it rotated. The earliest machine was developed by the founder of Duffens Optical. Robinson-Houchin Optical Company also entered the market about this time, offering its popular Greyhound line.

Generators

Shortly before World War II, lens manufacturers began using generators for factory lens production; but these units were too big and expensive for labs. Shortly after the war ended, Harold Fluegge, a wholesale lab owner in Milwaukee, began working on a lab generator. He eventually turned his preliminary work over to Shuron who went on to produce Model 190, the first practical generator for optical labs.

Sitting in a foxhole in the South Pacific, a man named Jack Suddarth produced his own concept for a generator. Bill Coburn purchased the patents and ultimately produced the first in a long line of Coburn generators. His was a desktop model that stored oil coolant in a drawer. Virtually hand-made, the generator was crude -- often spraying more coolant on the operator than on the lens -- but it worked. Best of all, Coburn's first model sold for $600 at a time when Shuron charged $3,600 for its more sophisticated unit.

Larger and more reliable models soon replaced the desktop generator. Both Coburn and Shuron generators used diamond wheels and produced spherical and cylindrical curves in seconds on either front or back surfaces, completely revolutionizing lab production. At a 1956 laboratory convention, Bill Coburn introduced four young ladies in shorts using Coburn generators. Women were seldom found in labs in those days, and with one dramatic gesture, he established that "unskilled" workers could produce reasonably precise lenses.

The modern optical laboratory had come of age!

Blocking Lenses

Before lenses can be surfaced, a metal block must be attached. Coburn Optical was made possible because it had a mechanized way to apply blocks to the lens blanks. Before then, pitch was heated over a Bunsen burner and dripped over lenses by hand, usually burning the operator's fingers and creating a mess. Coburn's blocker, however, heated pitch in an electric pot and injected pitch between lens and block with a small hand pump. A later model substituted a low-melting metal alloy, accomplishing the same thing without the mess of pitch. Less of a health hazard, lens blocking today often uses a wax substitute in place of alloy.

Tools/Laps

Whether surfaced in a hand pan or a generator, metal laps are needed for fining and polishing the surface. Early tools were cast iron and wore down quickly, but with spheres, wear was symmetrical and simply made tools thinner without changing curve. As cylinder lenses became popular in the early 1900s, however, cylinder tool truing was difficult since it was done with a hand file.

In 1919, Standard Optical found a machine developed by race car driver Barney Oldfield to produce overhead cams for racing engines that could also be used to cut optical cylinder tools. The Oldfield Lap Cutter solved a major problem for lab operators, and others were later developed by a variety of manufacturers. Iron laps came in two basic styles: Spherical and cylinder. As labs began fabricating plastic lenses, aluminum tools turned out to be the answer.

Computers

In the last half of the 20th century, computers have became essential in optical laboratories. In many labs today, prescription data is entered in the computer at the time the job enters the lab and controls every machine working on the lenses.

Edging Equipment

In 1900, edging was accomplished on ceramic wheels, turned at first by foot pedals, later by belt drive, and eventually by individual electric motor.

By 1915, several machinery manufacturers had taken the handwork out of edging by automating the process. Their edgers had chucks that held and rotated lenses in front of an edger wheel, producing finished lenses of the desired diameter and shape. Shape was controlled by a pattern, or cam, placed at the end of a rotating lens spindle. Dial indicator wheels determined size.

Later, ceramic wheels were developed with V grooves that produced a bevel as lenses were edged. This eliminated hand beveling, although metal frames still required some handwork. Arthur Lemay added a micro switch to his Lemay bevel edger. The resulting stop/go technique made it possible to edge elongated frame shapes just coming into vogue. His nephew and then-employee Joseph Santinelli later founded Santinelli International.

In the early-1950s, diamond wheels began to replace ceramic wheels, making it possible to edge lenses in less than two minutes.

As a soft material, polycarbonate led to development of router edgers that shaped and beveled lenses with a fluted carbide cutter instead of diamond wheels.

More recently, manufacturers have produced all material edgers that feature secondary wheels and selective control of water coolant.

During the mid-1980s, superstores that could deliver a complete pair of glasses in an hour's time were launched. Suddenly, the turn-of-the-century concept of a lab in the back office seemed more attractive; and during the next 10 years, many chains and independents concluded the only way to survive was to set up an in-office lab. This increasing demand stimulated manufacturers to improve their edgers and, by the year 2000, a wide variety of sophisticated edgers are available.

Pattern Makers

Prior to the 1950s, frame manufacturers provided steel patterns for edging lenses to their frames. As the variety of frames increased, inexpensive plastic patterns prevailed, but soon the number of patterns required became overwhelming.

The answer was to produce patterns on an individual basis by scanning each frame as the job came into the lab. Later, edgers were developed that didn't require patterns. For these patternless edgers, the digital data produced during frame scanning is stored in the computer. A few labs now install such scanning equipment in their customers' offices, enabling the lab to edge lenses without ever seeing the frame. Remote scanning is considered to be the future for laboratories.

Lenses delivered to patients today are worlds apart from what was available in 1900. When the 20th century began, eyewear was primarily for the wealthy. Today, all of America's consumers can enjoy the best possible vision, and most of this is made possible because of advances in the equipment. EB