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243 North 

Optometric His tori cal Soci,ty Vb _ . " 
Lindbergh Boulevard, St. Louis, M!s••¥4~~~1;~~, USA : 

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Volume 24 JULY 1993 Number 3 

A message from Sheard: 

The dedication of what may have been the first edifice 
designed and built to house an optometry school took place in June, 
1950, on which occasion the founder of the school, Charles Sheard, 
sent the following message describing the first five years (1914-
1919), a copy of which was provided by OHS member Neal Bailey: 

DISTINGUISHED GUESTS, BELOVED FRIENDS IN OPTOMETRY, 
ASSOCIATES AND COMRADES IN EDUCATION AND RESEARCH IN VISION IN 
THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY: SALUTATIONS AND GREETINGS. 

It is a source of much regret that Mrs. Sheard and I 
shall not be present with you on the occasion of the 
dedication of the Building to house the School of Optometry on 
the campus of the Ohio State University. A commitment made. 
last fall to be a guest of honor and a speaker on the occasion 
of the First All Canada Congress in Optometry in Winnipeg on 
June 10-12 causes me to wish that some great magician would 
shorten, for the day, the time and space on Monday, June 11, 
between Columbus and Winnipeg so that I might have the great 
pleasure and privilege of keeping my promise to your and my 
Canadian friends and fellow practitioners and of being with 
you on this Sunday in June on this most memorable occasion. 
The minor hardship of any shuttling back and forth is as 
nothing compared to the uncertainties of air travel on a 
schedule which, if not possible because of weather conditions, 
would cause me to have failed to keep my promise and to have 
failed to play my part by my presence and my words for the 
first time in nearly fifty years and hundreds of visits and 
lectures both here and abroad. I am sure you would desire 
that I keep my record perfect. 

For these reasons then I am unable to deliver myself in 
the body to you but I am delivering to you through the 
personage of our highly respected and much beloved 
professorial successor, Dr. Glenn Fry, a message of good 
cheer; a message of rejoicing over the great progress that has 
been made in optometry specifically and in the broad field of 
vision in general since the Fourth day of August 1914 when the 
course in optometry was established in the Ohio State 
University and I became the first professor of any such course 
in any university in the whole world, insofar as I know; a 
message of continuing interest in and support to all men and 
all things that are concerned educationally and professionally 
with vision; a message of exhortation to all of you gathered 



24/18 

together on this momentous occasion that you and, insofar as 
such is possible, all men and women, whether they be 
ophthalmologists, optometrists or opticians, rededicate 
themselves to a continuation of reading, study, and critical 
examination and a greater resolve to attempt to think clearly 
and without confusion, as you dedicate a building to house one 
particular school of teaching and scientific approach to the 
problems of vision on that part of the Campus of the Ohio 
State University devoted to the recently dedicated Health 
Center, surrounded by Schools and Colleges of Medicine, 
Dentistry, Pharmacy and other arts and sciences pledged and 
consecrated to teachings, practices and researches looking 
toward the alleviation of suffering and pain, the eradication 
of disease, and the dissemination and inculcation of knowledge 
concerning the care of the human body- -yes, if you please, the 
sanctity of the human body--that men may not only live but 
live the life more abundantly, with greater personal bodily 
and mental efficiency to better serve their fellow man to the 
glory of God as the embodiment of all that is good and true. 

If I were with you there is so much I could say about so 
many persons and things in some manner or other associated 
with the establishment of the course in optometry as the 
forerunner of the creation of the school. The warmth of my 
heart and the evidences of my energy and drive, coupled at 
times with the harshness of cold logic and the biting slash of 
sarcasm, cannot be conveyed in proper manner and just 
proportions through the medium of the written word. So, of 
necessity, I must refrain from much indulgence in the gentle 
and generally profitable (it is so to me) art of reminiscing. 
The shorthand recording of that which follows is very sketchy 
and spotty, leaving many of you who are here or who may read 
these words on a later occasion to fill in the details. 

First of all, I wish to pay tribute to the founding 
fathers. It is true that I am, from the academic or 
university viewpoint, the founder of the first University 
course. That educational undertaking could not have been 
accomplished without the helping hands and open pocketbooks of 
many men in Ohio. No man lives unto himself; no group lives 
unto itself; no university or part of a university lives unto 
itself. Any undertaking requires team-work, a variety of 
necessary avenues of assistance and support. The 
establishment of the two year course on August 4, 1914 
(changed the following year to a four year course at my 
request and after a series of conferences of a committee 
appointed by President Thompson to make recommendations) , was 
made possible by reason of the untiring efforts of such men as 
Clark Sloan of Cleveland, then president of the Ohio Society; 
C.B. Edgar of Cleveland, C.N. McDonnell, P.C. Harris, Dan 
Hubbell and Homer White of Columbus; F.P. Barr of Lancaster; 
John Eberhardt of Dayton and Emil Klein of Cincinnati. Of 
course there are other names that should be mentioned and if 
I have failed them I am asking that I be pardoned for such 



24/19 

sins of omission, for I am writing these words at the midnight 
hour and into the early morning hours and have no access to 
exact references at the moment. 

I also wish to pay tribute to the first class of ten 
young men. I can call them by name, I can see each of their 
faces, I can remember the many conversations of one kind and 
another and concerning one beginning of a very important 
educational movement and there were many questions and 
queries, . nay even dire accusations, unfriendly comments, 
destructive criticism. yes, indeed: a young professor 
setting out on an uncharted and unknown course, he himself 
setting the course and guiding himself and the ten fine young 
chaps by the light of the star as he saw it, the courage of 
his convictions, and his bulldog tenacity. And if, as the 
years have come and gone, I have moved on into other and 
broader fields of education and research and have become more 
liberal and broader in my viewpoints and contacts with the 
result that the "ism" and the "ology" have become wholly of 
secondary importance and the search for and acquisition of the 
truth insofar as such is possible has become paramount and 
supreme, let it be remembered that I owe a debt of 
inexpressible gratitude to the kindly words, warm clasp of 
hands and wholesome smiles of such men as Professor Landacre, 
professor of anatomy, and secretary of the Medicine School, 
Dr. Judson Ferree, professor of ophthalmology, Dr. Eugene 
McCampbell, then appointed (1918) dean of the Medical School, 
Dr. Arps ·(later dean of the College of Education) and many 
others of the faculty, including my own colleagues and 
associates in the department of physics, not the least of whom 
was Dr. Alpheus W. Smith, later dean of the Graduate School. 

I remember, as though it were yesterday, visiting with 
Professor Landacre about the work in anatomy, particularly of 
the eye. Said Landacre to me: "Sheard, these boys do not 
have more than a high school education; anatomy is a tough 
subject; what will happen if I have to flunk some of your ten 
boys?" "Well," said I: "If you believe you should flunk 
them, flunk them." "Yes," said he, "then you will not have 
any class. " "That's all right by me, " said I. "I would 
rather see them all flunked out and have to start the whole 
thing over another year than to have you pass them if they are 
not worthy." It always pays to stand by what is right 
because, in the end, that which is right and good and true 
will prevail. If that thesis is not correct and if weakness, 
incompetence, quackery, mysticism, rattle-trap doctrines and 
teachings are encouraged and permitted, then there is no hope. 
It is to wage war against such quackery, incompetence and 
questionable doctrines that such universities as the one in 
whose classic shades you now find yourselves establish such 
schools and build such quarters as have been dedicated today. 

To return to the anatomy course and the boys: they did 
not fail either Professor Landacre or me, although two of them 



24/20 

repeated some of the work. The point is: the course of 
instruction was sound; the professors had no favors to extend 
to anybody; it was a question of survival if there was 
anything that was fit to survive. Our belief in the goodness 
of the right type of education in optometry and the 
development of adequate service to the public based on 
adequacy of training was justified. The four year course-­
first established in the Ohio State University--did not 
succumb and finally became the accepted minimum standard on 
the part of all schools. Optometry has now come of age and 
may be expected to take its place as the years come and go in 
the body politic of the arts and sciences concerned with 
healing, public health and individual efficiency, commonly 
referred to as the field of medicine but which, in the broader 
concept which I have advocated and preached these many years, 
is the field of applied biologic science of which medicine per 
se is the center of the hub. 

In closing I can but refer briefly to the development of 
clinics concerned with distinct, comfortable and efficient 
vision, the correlation of the functions of accommodation and 
convergence, and all things germane thereto. In most, if not 
all, instances, courses in optometry have come into the 
universities through the departments of physics. It was very 
natural that this should be the case, since the emphasis in 
1914 and prior thereto was on ophthalmic optics- -lenses, 
prisms, spectacles, frames--or the physical aspects. I think 
I can say with truthfulness and the right type of modesty that 
I was the first educator having anything to do with optometry 
who brought in and emphasized the physiological aspects and 
phases of the work and developed that which is usually 
referred to as dynamic ocular tests and which, in turn, have 
been so ably extended and amplified by Fry, Tait and Morgan. 
Today there appears to be a tendency on the part of optometry 
to introduce into the solution of clinical problems of vision 
the psychological aspects. Mathematics and physical science 
are the corner-stone or base on which all else is reared. 
They are the only exact science we have. Biology has many 
variables and variants and less exactness of laws and 
conclusions. Psychology has still more variables and 
intangibles (to the points of inability to define, on 
occasion, with any degree of exactness) and must of necessity 

» be the least accurate of the three, the only degree of 
accuracy possible being based on the other two, although the 
viewpoints and methods of approach differ from the physical 
and physiological approaches and therefore are of value. Too 
frequently are the contributions from the field of psychology 
as they relate to vision simply a jargon of words, with the 
use of catchy expressions and even the coinage of terms that 
when carefully analyzed, mean nothing and are literally 
figments of the minds of the authors. The academic field of 
psychology and psychiatry are, of necessity, somewhat nebulous 
and indefinite in verbiage and conclusions. It would be well 
for the nonmedically trained practitioner to leave all of 



24/21 

these things to the medical profession in general or, in 
particular, neurologists, psychiatrists and other adequately 
trained (with Ph.D. degrees) specialists who may be associated 
with them. Otherwise it is likely to resolve itself into pure 
and unadulterated quackery, of which I am sorry to say a 
considerable part of the American public seem, at the moment, 
to be fond and to which they are susceptible. OptometkY has 
a sphere of real service and usefulness and has enough to do 
if it will attend to its own practices which have been built 
on solid principles over these past fifty years. 

The faculty of the Ohio State University and the many 
acquaintances and friends in the city of Columbus, Ohio, will 
always be close to my heart. I came to them as a cub 
instructor (the bottom of the list) in physics in 1907. In 
the spring of 1908 I went to Cedar Point to address a state 
meeting of optometrists and opticians. This was the beginning 
of the making of acquaintances and friendships which led, 
through devious pathways and sundry means, to the beginnings 
of an educational adventure which finds its culmination, in 
part at least and for the day and age in which we live, in the 
establishment of a school of optometry and a home in which to 
house it in dignity and with honor on the campus of the Ohio 
State University. 

May the dedication of this building to the arts and 
sciences concerned with vision also carry with it a 
rededication of ourselves to the support of that which is true 
and good and lovely beyond all comparison. May God bless us 
and keep us and cause His face to shine upon us, giving us 
health and strength to labor on, and kindness and wisdom as we 
serve those who come to us for assistance and counsel, 
exemplifying at all times the spirit of the Golden Rule. This 
is the sincere wish and heart's desire of your friend Charles 
Sheard. 

OptometkY in Zambia: 

Accompanying a handwritten letter of February 25, 1992, to the 
Secretary of the International Optometric and Optical League from 
Dr. Dixon Konkola, P.O. Box 32135, Lusaka, Zambia (formerly 
Northern Rhodesia) is a typewritten report entitled OPTOMETRY OR 
OPTICS IN ZAMBIA 1920-1991. It is not clear from the introductory 
paragraphs what Konkola's nationality is but, if he was not born in 
what is now Zambia, he has lived there most of his life, which, 
from the events he mentions, seems to date back to the '20's. 

For example, he mentions an epidemic of measles in the '30's 
and adds, "The following were the methods of eye care amongst the 
natives of Northern Rhodesia. They collected snails' backs and 
ground them before putting them into sore eyes. They also ground 
roots which they used smeared into face cuts as medicine. Some 
leaves were ground and soaked as well as the hollow reeds which 
were used to wipe tears from the eyes. The lucky were cured but 



24/22 

the unlucky ones went blind. There were no spectacles but when 
traders who wore spectacles came the natives called them 'mondals' 
as were their shops and trade." 

The meaning of "mondals" is not explained. 

Continuing, "In 1940 I began to feel that I should have 
glasses. I therefore got my first glasses in 1959 in Elizabeth 
Ville. I had tried to see Dr. Phillips who was the ophthalmologist 
or eye specialist at Ndola Government Hospital. Dr. Phillips was 
well known for his glasses. When I began my apprenticeship with 
Dr. Fred Buck, Dr. Phillips had gone to Zimbabwe, after -Zambia's 
independence." 

Dr. Buck was one of two opticians practicing in Lusaka. Dr. 
Konkola bought the practice after seven years of apprenticeship. 
Later he spent a year in clinical work with Dr. Freeman in London. 
Subsequently Zambia acquired an optician from Sweden, another from 
India, and a lady optician from the Philippines, plus two or three 
others from unidentified sources. 

The rest of the paper deals with current developments and 
problems in the ophthalmic field in Zambia in which Dr. Konkola 
seems to play the leading role. 

Fleeting technology: 

Often we identify history with only the events that occurred 
prior to our living memory. In actual fact it must be identified 
with whatever happened when. In case this point seems a bit 
overemphasized, just read carefully the following opening paragraph 
in a draft supplement to the minutes of the February 24, 1992, 
meeting of the Indiana University School of Optometry faculty 
entitled "Progress Report for Last 3-Year Plan (1989-92)": 

Technological development of the School of Optometry has been 
so rapid over the past three years that today it is difficult 
to envision the state of affairs described in the previous 3-
year plan (5/89). At that time only a few faculty or staff 
had access to microcomputers; today everyone has a personal 
workstation on his or her desk. In 1989 we had a "guerilla 
network" interconnecting a few research Macintosh computers 

~with a slow, unreliable LocalTalk network and a single, shared 
T-box which provided a tenuous link to the rest of the campus 
via SYTEK; today every computer in the school is on a high­
speed ethernet, which supports a local area network (LAN) of 
some 70 Macintosh and 20 IBM-class microcomputers, plus a 
high-speed fiber-optic link to the rest of the Bloomington 
campus and from there to the greater Internet. Three years 
ago we longed for a way to share information with each other 
electronically; today we are served by two file servers, one 
dedicated to research and the other to general purposes, plus 
a convenient, heavily-used electronic mail system which puts 
every faculty, staff, associate, and graduate student in 



24/23 

immediate contact with each other. Back then we wished for a 
network of printers, scanners, graphics workstations, and 
other tools needed to implement our mission; today we have all 
of these plus a device unique to IU departments, a film 
recorder for transferring color graphics and data to 
photographic film. In 1989 our clinic was struggling with a 
nearly useless computer system for managing patient records; 
today the clinic is served by a modern, reliable network of 
computers running state-of-the-art business-management 
software that is poised for distributed access to faculty, 
staff, and students for teaching and research purposes. Back 
then we identified a need to connect our faculty, staff, and 
students with the Optometry library; today our library is 
fully integrated into the Optometry LAN and electronic mail 
system, which supports such services as personalized scanning 
of Current Contents, and the entire IU library system is 
available at the desktop through the IU network. 

A heyday for stereopsis: 

Probably out of print but likely to be available in many 
public libraries, and especially museum libraries, is a 1977 book 
authored and published by Professor William C. Darrah, Gettysburg, 
Pennsylvania, entitled "The World of Stereographs." It deals with 
just about every aspect of stereography except the optics. The 
first 69 pages are devoted to a history which has considerable 
incidental interest for optometrists. 

The invention of the daguerreotype and later photographic 
processes together with the introduction of the Holmes, Brewster, 
and other easily handled models of the stereoscope led to a parlor 
pastime that rivaled in significance today' s television role in the 
home. The popularity era included the eight and a half decades 
between 1850 and 1935. One manufacturer boasted, "A stereoscope 
for every home." Darrah personally identified the names and 
locations of many thousands of stereographers in North America 
alone and thousands more elsewhere. The total number of different 
stereographs produced probably exceeded five million. The eighty 
categories of subject matter identified by the author. range from 
"advertising" to "zoology." 

The earliest stereographs were made by simultaneous exposure 
of two cameras laterally separated, or with one camera laterally 
displaced between two successive exposures. The latter technique 
occasionally resulted in the appearance of a person, horse and 
buggy, or other moving object in one of the two pictures but not in 
the other. Stereoscopic cameras were commercially manufactured in 
1854 to meet the rapidly growing demand. The same demand led a 
number of optician-optometrists to manufacture and sell 
stereoscopes. 

Were optometrists otherwise involved in the implementation of 
the pastime? Because many of the stereographs rewarded the 
sharpest visual acuity for their maximum appreciation, correction 



24/24 

of refractive errors .. must have been paramount. The small but 
significant number of functionally monocular persons must also have 
expressed their puzzlement as to what phenomenal sensation 
binocular viewers were claiming. And then there were certainly 
.those patients with heterophoric imbalances that reported diplopia 
or simply fusional delays or even instrumentally induced headaches 
when engaging in stereoviewing. Evidence that such clinical 
complaints occurred is not apparent, but perhaps we have not 
searched diligently. 

Pouces and Zelle: 

These terms in French and German respectively, and inches in 
English, were small units of length commonly used in specifying 
lens power in terms of radii and focal lengths in the latter half 
of the 19th century. Eventually the reciprocal term diopter took 
over, and we now use it without our consciousness of the complexity 
of the related standardization process. Similar but a considerably 
less complex evolvement of the term prism diopter occurred during 
a contemporary time period. 

The history of these developments is described by G.B.· 
Friedman in an article entitled "Diopter and prism diopter" in the 
February 1992 issue of the Journal of the American Optometric 
Association, vel. 63, no. 2, pp. 117-22 with 43 references! 

In spite of this obviously exhaustive search of .the literature 
the author did not mention Da9a de Valdez's use of the grad, a 
reciprocal unit very nearly equal to the diopter. That was in 
1623, two and a half centuries earlier. 

Editor: 

Managing Editor: 

Contributing Editor: 

*** 
Douglas K. Penisten 
College of Optometry 
Northeastern State University 
Tahlequah, OK 74464 
USA 

David A. Goss 
School of Optometry 
Indiana University 
Bloomington, IN 47405 
USA 

Henry W Hofstetter 
1050 Sassafras Circle 
Bloomington, IN 47401 
USA 


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