British Optical Association Museum
⭐ Highligts
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
Opening Hours
🤓 Fun Facts
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.
