Category:
Eyes and Vision

Vision-Dieter Glasses

The Vision-Dieter glasses were weight-loss eyeglasses, created by Arkansas entrepreneur John D. Miller who sold them for $19.95 each. They had a different lens for each eye: one brown and the other blue. Miller claimed that the different colors caused a low-level of confusion in a person's subconscious that led to a loss of appetite, and thus weight loss. In 1982 the U.S. attorney stopped the sale of the glasses because Miller hadn't registered them with the Food and Drug Administration. Also, there was no evidence they actually worked as a diet aid.



image source: Flickr



FDA employee Karen Kowlok models Vision-Dieter glasses
Newport News Daily Press - Mar 21, 1985



From the Wilmington News Journal - Aug 6, 1982:

[Miller] came upon the idea for the appetite-inhibiting lenses, he said, in one of his supermarkets. He noted that customers were attracted to shelves by certain colors. "If people could be controlled by one color," he thought, "they could be decontrolled by another."

Perhaps tinted eyeglasses could reverse the attraction to food by affecting the subconscious, Miller hypothesized. And he went to work.

The experiments began with employees of one of his enterprises, the Miller Vision Centers. Soon the research was extended to his patients.

At first, the results were mixed. He had chosen the wrong colors. Then he hit upon crimson brown and royal blue.

"It's crazy. I can't tell you exactly how, but it works," Miller said.

Soon testimonial letters were coming into Miller's office by the dozens. In virtually every case, people who wore the glasses said they weren't eating as much. He conducted control experiments with the help of a psychologist and claimed a 97 percent success rate.

Posted By: Alex - Thu Jun 29, 2017 - Comments (1)
Category: Food, 1980s, Dieting and Weight Loss, Eyes and Vision

Eye-Analyzer

In the early 1950s, Steven Warren opened the Foundation for Better Reading — a Chicago-based school that taught speed reading. One of the gadgets used in the school were these "eye-analyzers" that allowed an instructor to watch the eye movements of a student, and tell them when they were moving their eyes too much.

Newsweek - Jan 11, 1954



Chicago Daily Tribune - Apr 22, 1951

Posted By: Alex - Wed Feb 15, 2017 - Comments (1)
Category: 1950s, Eyes and Vision

Mystery Illustration 37

image

What horrors are causing the eyes of this Bride-of-Frankenstein lookalike to bug out?


Answer after the jump.



More in extended >>

Posted By: Paul - Sun Jan 22, 2017 - Comments (4)
Category: Horror, Advertising, 1940s, Eyes and Vision, Face and Facial Expressions

Blew Nose, Eye Fell Out

In September 1942, a young miner, Ronald Cutler, had finished his shift, so he blew his nose to get the coal dust out. His eye fell out onto his cheek. A superintendent was able to pop it back in, and Cutler appeared "little the worse for the occurrence."

News of the World - Sep 20, 1942

Kingston Daily Freeman - Oct 29, 1942



In April 1899, a similar case was reported in the Southern California Practitioner (which in turn got the story from a German-language paper, the Illinois Staatz Zitung). A glass blower blew his nose violently, and his right eyeball came out of its socket. A colleague was able to put it back in, but on the way to the doctor's office the same thing happened again... and then a third time at the doctor's office.


There's an old legend that if you sneeze with your eyes open, your eyeballs will come out. Mythbusters says that's not true, noting, "although a sneeze can erupt from your nose at an explosive 200 miles per hour, it can't transfer this pressure into your eye sockets to dethrone your eyeballs. Plus, there's no muscle directly behind the eye to violently contract and push the orbs outward."

How then do we explain these odd cases of eyeballs coming out when people blow their nose?

Update: I just found a third case of eyeball dislocation following nose blowing, reported by Dr. John Tyler of Kansas City in 1888. His patient, upon waking in the morning, "felt the need of a good, hard blow, and said he really was making an extra effort, when to his horror and amazement he felt his left eye pop right out between the lids, and stick!" His wife popped the eye back in, and the man suffered no apparent damage from the incident.

Posted By: Alex - Sat Dec 10, 2016 - Comments (1)
Category: Body, Eyes and Vision, Health

Death by Myopia

image

Click to embiggen.

Original story here.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Aug 07, 2016 - Comments (2)
Category: Death, Law, 1980s, Eyes and Vision

Miss Optometry of 1956

image

In line with Alex's ceaseless quest for oddball beauty queens, may we present Kipp Hamilton, who actually had a career. But she must have misremembered this honor, for all sources quote Kipp as claiming it happened in the year 1953. But such data has become easier to verify or disprove since Google added its newspaper archives.

Original story here.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Mar 14, 2016 - Comments (7)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Contests, Races and Other Competitions, Movies, 1950s, Eyes and Vision

Universal Colorblindness Test

New stuff from artist Jonathon Keats. He's developed what he calls a "Universal Colorblindness Test," which combines the standard colorblindness test with the new fad for adult coloring books.

He describes it as the first colorblindness test that will "adapt to each viewer’s eyesight as the viewer colors them in." He adds, "My test is the first to internalize chromatic subjectivity, ensuring equally positive test results for everybody.”

Available at Walls360.



Posted By: Alex - Wed Jan 13, 2016 - Comments (4)
Category: Art, Eyes and Vision

Geeky Eyeglasses for Sale



Wow, those are some seriously geeky frames!

I had never heard the phrase "corneal micro lenses" before, but apparently that was the original term for contact lenses. Sounds very cyberpunk even today. I think we should all start telling people, "Yes, I have corneal micro lenses in place."

image

Posted By: Paul - Wed Dec 02, 2015 - Comments (3)
Category: Technology, 1950s, Eyes and Vision

Third Eye


The fisherman said he was going to eat the fish. Without knowing why it developed a third eye I wouldn't touch it much less eat it!

Posted By: Alex - Tue Nov 10, 2015 - Comments (5)
Category: Nature, Fish, Eyes and Vision

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Who We Are
Alex Boese
Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

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Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

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