British Optical Association Museum
One of the world’s most comprehensive collections for the vision sciences: thousands of spectacles, lenses, charts, opticians’ tools and diagnostic devices trace how humans learned to test, correct and even play with sight—from medieval rivet spectacles to trial frames, stereoscopes and phoropters.
Opening Hours
What's not to miss inside?
Spectacles Through the Centuries
A chronological wall of frames—rivet spectacles, pince-nez, lorgnettes, quizzing glasses—shows how fashion, materials and optics evolved together.Match frame styles to social settings: courtly lorgnettes vs. industrial-age steel spectacles.
📍 Main study cases
Testing Vision: Charts & Instruments
From Snellen letters to bespoke optotypes and early optometers, the kit that turned ‘how well can you see?’ into a measurable number.Try reading a non-Latin optotype—testing without language was an early accessibility breakthrough.
📍 Optometry instruments section
Inside the Consulting Room
Trial lens sets, cross-cylinders and retinoscopes reveal the hands-on craft behind spectacle prescriptions before automated refractors.Weigh an antique trial frame in the mind’s hand—patients once wore these for long test runs.
📍 Reconstructed practice displays
Optical Toys & 3-D Vision
Stereoscopes, anaglyphs and novelty lenses show how entertainment drove public appetite for optical science.View paired photographs that ‘jump’ into depth: 19th-century VR, no batteries required.
📍 Stereoscopy & amusements
Inspire your Friends
- Founded in 1901, it is among the oldest museums dedicated to eye care and vision science, with a collection now numbering tens of thousands of objects.
- Snellen’s 1860s letter chart sparked a wave of alternative ‘optotypes’—numbers, pictures and tumbling E’s—so clinicians could test non-readers and non-Latin alphabets.
- Stereoscopy’s Victorian boom created a mass market for optical hardware—many domestic parlours owned a viewer long before they owned a camera.
