The College of Opsiologists?

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The first programmes of professional education and examination in optics were founded by the British Optical Association in 1895 and the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers in 1898. It was soon felt that those practitioners who had passed these new professional examinations needed a title that would advertise their level of qualification to the general public. Their ranks included a number of jewellers and chemists who engaged in optics as a sideline and wanted recognition for their skills. Chemists, in particular, were finding the optical adjunct to their trade to be a profitable one. For instance, a treatise on the 'spectacle business', and the science and technique involved in it, was published for the benefit of retail chemists in The Chemists' and Druggists' Diary of 1900. It was not surprising, then, that the BOA formed a Nomenclature Committee to investigate the matter.