Nothing New Under the Sun

It was a slow news day at the Pantagraph but one curious advertisement caught my eye:

When no-line bifocals came to my attention I thought they were a new technology. As everyone knows Benjamin Franklin developed the first bifocal. What fewer people know is that A. Estelle Glancy, Ph D received the first patent for a progressive bifocal lens in 1926! http://www.dickwhitney.net/AOHistoryLensDesignersGlancy.html Glancy began her career at Wellesley in mathematics and astronomy. She went on to obtain her Ph D in Astronomy and worked as an astronomer for some time, before changing careers and beginning work in lens making, which involves a high degree of mathmatics.

Bloomington of course had its own Opthalmic pioneers. Watson W. Gailey was a nationally famous physician (ENT) who went on to study the eye after World War I. He served in the hospitals in New Jersey during this country's involvement in the war, working to repair the men shattered by that war. He later created the Gailey Eye Bank