Optician’s monthly sister publication from the 1960s, Manufacturing Optician, is the subject of this week’s Echoes of the Past retrospective. The July issue from 1964 covered a range of topics from reports on the state of the US sunglass market to one from the European Committee for Optical and Precision Engineering conference.
Around the time the issue was published, US President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act & Voting Rights Act into law and the Beatles’ film Hard Day’s Night premiered in London.
The American Optical Company (AO) was once one of the biggest optical goods manufacturers in the world. A two-page report on its financial results for 1963 drilled down into the operations of the company – which was then 132 years old.
Headline figures were sales of $109m and earnings of $3.6m. AO was reported to have 10,322 employees and 8,131 shareholders. Ophthalmic lens sales had reached an all-time high in 1963, thanks in part to increased acceptance of larger lens sizes. Sunglass sales were also high and AO was listed as one of the two largest sunglass producers in the US.
Interestingly, AO had also made inroads into space defence and establish a dedicated division focusing on highly specialised products such as missile-tracking equipment, large lightweight optics and testing equipment for inertial guidance systems.
Elsewhere in the issue, the news pages reported on the Bausch+Lomb-sponsored Optical Industry Snooker tournament, played at the Conservative Club in Tottenham. Mr R Miller from Alpha Lens walked away with the trophy after beating Optopolis’ Mr I Margolis in the final.