Optician You first wrote for Optician back in 1960 – what were you doing at the time?
Mo Jalie I was working for Stigmat Ltd (the Rolls Royce of lens manufacturers/Rx Houses at the time) where I had been sent by my father so that I could ‘learn about spectacle lenses from the bottom’. He told me that the dictionary definition of an optician is ‘one who is skilled in the art of making lenses’, a point I have made to generations of students during my teaching career. I was also in the second year of an evening course in dispensing optics at Northampton College of Advanced Technology (now the City University).
Optician What first got you interested in optics?
MJ Father owned a group of optical practices which he wanted me to take over when I had qualified as an optician. I had an elder brother who had just won the Whitgift Exhibition from our school in Croydon to read mathematics at Cambridge. He was the mathematician of the family and clearly not destined to take over the family business.
Optician Your book is now the key text on ophthalmic lenses – was this always your ambition?
MJ I was asked by the ADO (now ABDO) if they could publish my lecture notes to support their distance learning course. They said that their students (who in 1966 and at the GOC’s behest, had to attend City College for four weeks a year) found my lectures easy to follow. Actually, my notes were rather sketchy and I had to sit down and write them out properly so that they made sense to the reader. Some 50 years later I have been given the opportunity to revise the text completely, added four more chapters to include all the developments since 1984 when the fourth edition last appeared, and redrawn all the diagrams for the new fifth edition of the book.
Optician Tell us a little about the many institutions in the UK and around the world with which you are associated.
MJ Because I had started to write articles for the Optician and her sister journal, Manufacturing Optics International, my name became known, particularly within the manufacturing industry. By the end of my first 10 years of teaching, I had had some 70 papers and four books, (two on the newly introduced computer) published and, in 1971, I had introduced the computer to an astonished prescription industry. As a result I installed computerised surfacing instruction into several prescription laboratories in the UK and Europe, including the original system in the newly built Dollond & Aitchison Yardley laboratory. As a result of this I was invited to become a consultant to many major lens manufacturers advising on lens designs and notably, aspheric lenses. Prior to 1980, aspherical surfaces were used primarily for post-cataract lenses and magnifying lenses. Aspherical surfaces were difficult to manufacture and no Rx laboratory at the time had the CNC machining facilities to produce them. I realised, as a result of some work I was doing for a new camera lens, that aspherical surfaces could be used to reduce the bending and hence the thickness of lenses of any power.
On the professional side, I was head of department of applied optics at City & Islington College, adviser on dispensing education to the GOC, first chairman of the Faculty of Dispensing Opticians, formed when the BOA and SMC ceased their examining functions and first chairman of the Academic Committee of ABDO when the Faculty and ADO merged in 1986. I was invited to join the Court of Assistants of the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers in 1986 and became master in 1993.
When I took early retirement from my post at City & Islington College at the end of 1995, I was invited by Essilor International in Paris to assist in the formation of Varilux University, now called Essilor Academy Europe. For the past two years I have been chairman of the board of advisers to The International Vision Academy, TIVA, the Essilor AMERA Academy which covers the Africa, Middle East, Russia and Asia-Pacific activities of Essilor International. In 2015, I opened their new Academy in Singapore.
In 1997 I was appointed as a visiting professor in optometry at the then recently formed University of Ulster, a post I still retain and continue to teach the optics module in the first semester.
Optician How do you feel the optical profession has changed over your career – and how do you see it developing in the future?
MJ From the ECP’s point of view, the expansion of optical chains and the number of women in the profession is an obvious change from the middle of the last century. It was feared that the deregulation of dispensing in the middle of the 1980s would have a significant effect on the profession and in particular on the number of students who might enrol for dispensing courses but, in fact, had the reverse effect with student numbers increasing for all modes of training. As the path of optometry moves closer and closer to medicine, the amount of dispensing undertaken by optometrists is bound to decline even further and from this standpoint alone, the future is rosy for dispensing opticians.
Optician Has lens technology progressed faster of slower then you thought?
MJ There has been an explosion in lens technology over the past 20 years. Aspheric and atoric lenses, free form production methods, personalisation of spectacle prescriptions, optimisation of progressive lenses, multipurpose coatings and fast acting photochromic plastic materials to name just a few.
Optician Do you think there are technologies that could have been developed further?
MJ I think that the R&D departments in most major lens manufacturers are hard at work on new technologies in every area of spectacle lens development. I still find it surprising that lens manufacturers are now driving the profession in suggesting alternative forms of correction. Blue light protection, the use of degressive lenses and compensated prescriptions are just a few examples of innovation in daily practice, which are purely industry born. Free form technology allows progressive lenses to be made with different cylinder powers and/or axes in the distance and near portion and some manufacturers are offering this facility, again without being asked by the profession.
Optician Do you think the public fully appreciate how far lens technology has progressed?
MJ No, but I do think that both the generic and the not so generic, advertising in magazines and on TV are helping to improve the situation. In the long run it is practitioners themselves, especially dispensing opticians, who are in contact with the public who must be able to explain all the advantages of today’s high tech products.
Optician Do you think the profession fully appreciates how far lens technology has progressed?
MJ Those who keep up-to-date with new products certainly should be aware of new technologies. CET, with the opportunity for peer discussion, helps enormously but such sessions should not be allowed to degenerate to purely marketing exercises by lens salesmen who often do not fully understand the new development themselves.
Optician Is the understanding of lenses at the level it should be?
MJ Sadly, often not. There are many practices where dispensing is undertaken by non-qualified staff who lack the depth of knowledge needed to fully understand the advantages and disadvantages of modern lenses. The real disadvantage which is suffered by non-qualified staff is that they do not realise what they do not know.
Optician Has the profession of dispensing improved over your career?
MJ I would like to think that the scope of the dispensing optician has widened over my career but with the number of unqualified staff who undertake dispensing under the so-called supervision of an often not-present, qualified member of staff, I cannot give an outstanding yes in answer to your question. Whereas, when I started, hand-made spectacle frames were commonplace, frame dispensing has shifted to making a stock frame fit. One area in which I do think the profession has improved has been brought about by the introduction some 50 years ago of the progressive lens which has made the profession realise the importance of the correct fitting of lenses.
Optician What would your comment be on the level of mathematics in modern schools?
MJ I think that over my teaching career we have witnessed a steady decline in the mathematical ability of students. My personal opinion is that both decimalisation of the British monetary system and the introduction of pocket calculators have both contributed to this state of affairs. Some part of the human brain is not receiving the arithmetic stimulation that it used to. There was a time when one could say to a student that a given problem may result in a quadratic equation. Today, one has to explain exactly what a quadratic equation is and, then, how to solve it. It is especially curious that in optometric education, as spectacle lenses become more and more sophisticated; requiring stronger mathematical ability to fully understand them, this aspect of the syllabus is no longer getting the attention it used to.
Optician Where will the next big developments in optics be?
MJ May I be controversial and suggest an expansion in minor surgery and shared care for optometrists; refraction and issuing the prescription for dispensing optician. Clearly, the scope of both professions is increasing and from the ECP’s point of view it is a matter of ‘watch this space’.
Optician Which lecturers were influential to you while at university?
MJ I was fortunate to be taught by an astonishing team of lecturers whom I constantly badgered for the ‘whys’ behind the work I was doing in the prescription house.
These included, in the first year of my evening class days, Charles Bedwell, who constantly urged me to transfer from the three-year dispensing path which I had chosen to that of the five-year ophthalmic optics course. In the second year, Mike Freeman whose ability to teach optics made the subject so clear to me and in the third year Paul Fairbanks whose wide knowledge of the prescription industry was obvious to all. It was Paul Fairbanks who first suggested that I should consider teaching as a career.
Arthur Bennett was a consultant to Stigmat at the time and, although he had not yet started his distinguished time as a teacher at City University, I was fortunate enough to have had access to all the scientific papers which he had written. I guess that he was my true mentor during my days at Northampton College.
Optician Many of your former students have gone on to achieve eminent positions. What are your memories of them as undergraduates?
MJ Very fond. Many former students have gone on to high office in the ABDO, to successful teaching careers or have held good positions within the prescription industry.
One of the arts of teaching, just like parenthood, is to keep the youngsters onside. It is the older generation who have the experience and skills not to drive their students into a corner from which they cannot escape with dignity. I like to think that most of the students whom I have had the privilege to teach remember their teacher with at least a little affection.