Solution to a Magnivisor

[joseph engraver]

I have always disliked the Magnivisor as a means of looking at my work. There was an optometrist in town that knew a bit about engraving. I went to see him and explained that I wanted made a pair of eyeglasses that would allow me to see the whorls that made up my finger prints at a distance of 12 inches from my nose. (My normal working distance).We made a trade, eyeglasses for engraving his spurs. These glasses served me well for many years. You can see one lens is set differently than the other to correct a stigmatism, the frame is rugged to withstand wear and tear, the lenses are tinted 10% grey to eliminate glare and are small in size. Allowing me to look over and under them at tools, drawings or whoever came to my studio without flipping that uncomfortable Magnivisor up and down every other minute. They were my solution to an expensive stereo microscope. What there exact magnification is only the optometrist knows, but I would guess 7x.

 

[Dave London]

Thanks Joseph
Good info I have a microscope but am looking for something that is portable and has a wider field

 

[Bill Tokyo]

Some thoughts from an optics fan

I'm interested in optics and as well as dealing in watches also deal in eyeglasses.

I think that your solution was pretty good, the main objection being perhaps the weight of the
lenses, which doesn't bother some people.

It looks like you had these glasses made some time ago. Since then dual loupes often termed
"surgeons binoculars" have become very common in the medical field, but still rare elsewhere
due to cost. I recently asked a well know Czech lens manufacturer for a quote and the
exfactory cost was $640. This means close to $2,000 retail.

However, there are increasing numbers of devices, head worn available for low vision, and
digital devices are beginning to enter the field. There are now digital magnifying glasses that
can zoom from 1x to 20x on the market, and some head worn models too. Price is a
problem once again: we are still talking between $500 to $ 2,000.

One of the most interesting devices I ever saw was used by my former printer. He had a pair of
glasses that was double and hinged on top. He was extremely nbearsighted. Whenever he wanted to
look at anything in detail he just flipped his eyeglasses up. The top layer were corrective lenses
and the bottom layer ordinary glass.

What I sometimes wonder is why don't more people adopt one of the most simple solutions of all: many types of watchmakers loupes are made to be worn on eyeglasses. Working distance is normally about 30 cm to 40 cm from the watch. Magnification is normally 2x to 5x. I keep an assortment of different ones on my desk.
Some loupes are made double lensed so that you can go from 5x to as much as 10 x by just flipping down
an extra lens.

As watchmakers loupes are designed so that they can be worn on either eye, I sometime wonder why
people don't use this as a cheap way to make themselves "surgeons binoculars". If you put one
loupe on both the left and right hand side of eyeglass frames, you would have binocular magnification,
you would be able to flip either eye's magnification up out of the way if not needed, and you could
put two different magnifying powers on each eye giving a lot of flexibility.

I think this could all be done for under $150 if you used top optics from American makers like
Bausch and Lomb. It would work as well, or perhaps better than Engraver Joseph's eyeglasses, and
certainly approach the utitlity of surgeons binoculars.

Bill