Perspectives
The best bargain around

Consumers assume lenses are spit out of a machine ready to frame. I've always thought that if they could tour a modern lab or lens facility, they'd realize that spectacle lenses are the best bargain around.

I've been lucky enough to visit a number of lens facilities--Essilor, Hoya, Rodenstock, Transitions, and this spring, Zeiss in Germany--and each time I come away wishing there were a consumer-friendly video of how lenses are made that could play in patient waiting rooms. Maybe then, people would appreciate what a value they're getting.

At many facilities, the "control" room above the production floor looks from the outside like a 1940s movie set where you'd see the cigar-chewing boss looking down at his workers. Inside, however, it's more like a scene from Star Wars, with technicians quietly scanning a sea of screens.

And, while inspection and quality assurance stations are increasingly automated, most facilities still have workers inspecting jobs. So, for all the automation, lens making is still a labor-intensive process.

That contrast is most apparent in areas of labs that handle the tough Rx's. At Aalen, for example, there's a room where master opticians still craft special-order low vision spectacles the old fashioned way. By hand.

Today's technology is incredible. But, for me, it's the way optical's labs and lens manufacturing facilities have married high tech with high touch that's even more amazing. But don't take my word for it. Go to a facility, and see for yourself why lenses are, indeed, the best bargain around.

Stephanie K. De Long
Editor-in-Chief

P.S. Speaking of lenses, don't miss this month's Seiko-sponsored CE course for opticians that begins after page 24.