The Newtown bee., 1880-11-03
GLASS EYES.
How Eyes Are NIade-A Trade Which is . Real Fine Art-Counterfeit Optics For Dogs and Horses-Somethins About Dolls, Eyes.

DoIis' Eyes.
 the manufacture of glass eyes," observed a Broadway optician to a New York NeUs reporter. "We are, or rather one New Yorker is, making as perfect ones now as were ever turned out of any of the French factories, and 1t will not be many months before our market will be fully supplied with eyes of home manu- facture. I ship a great many to South and Central America, and where l had to keep the supply up with imported stock last year, l am now sending more than half of American make away. My shipments are almost all to private customers. There are no dealers in glass eyes down there, though the orders for them generally come from physicians who make neat percentage out of their customers. Is the business an exten- sive onee It is much more so than you would suppose. I don't know whether gouging is favorite amusement in Bueous Ayres now, but I sent sevearI gross of eyes to that place alone las year, and nearly as many to Rio Janeiro."
 The secrets of the manufacture of glass eyes are very jealously guarded ones every manufacturer claiming to possess
 
 those limpid channels which so closely approach nature in the colors they im- part to the artificial optic. Most of them do have special formul8 for the manufacture of their channels, the result of extensive eXperimentalizing, ane which they set high value on. The general method of glass-eye making, however, is by no means as mysterious as it is interesting.
 Artificial optics are made, in the first place, upon very minute description of the eye whose loss they are intended to conceal. The color, shape, size and general appearance of the sound eye are specified as closely as possible, together with the depth and dimensions of the empty socket, and the size of the stump. For it must be known that there is always, or almost always, a muscular hollow of the glass substitute is fitted. Thanks to this stump, the wearer of a glass eye may move it about almost as naturally as if it were real one:
 Artificial eyes nowadays are only a light shell of enamel, differing very much in form according to their wearers. They are all made by hand, no mold of any kind being used, and the artihclers become so expert that good workman will produce an infinite number of eyes so identical in form, size and color, that i t is impossible to distinguish between thefin, with no other tools than his breath and hands. Glass eyes, as everybody knows, are made to be placed under the eyelid. They consist of two distinct shells, the exterior one, which presents the aspect of the natural eye, and the interior, or lining one, which is fitted to tha ctrIy1on Tho Ia horc at a table on which is lamp, 10 whose flame the blast of 8 bellows worked with his foot gives pointed jet of the varying strength he may require.
 The first process consists of heating the end of 8 hollow tube of color .ess cryst1 l, | which is then blown into ball. This | transparent shell is colored to initiate the sclerotica or white of the eye with channels applied while the glass is still a vitreous paste. The tint of the white l varies from very clear one to bilious | yellow. according as the person who is to wear it has his other eye to match. To such fine point is this cJloring busi- ness carried, that it is affirmed to be a very rere thing that glass eyes for any two different people are exactly alike. | When the sclerotica is finished, round | hole is made in the center to receive the globe of the eye. This vsries in size even as the white does in color In washing the globe the iris is first formed out Of several amalgamated channels. In 1 the center of this iris the pupil as fixed | in black enamel, encircled with its au- reola, and finished by the delicate tracery | of those infinitely small tibers which are I found in the iris of the natural eye. | The eye globe, when finished, is soldered into the opening, in the salerotica shell. and the optic is after little delicate general fixing up. complete.
 i Artificial eyes are nearly as old as | history. When an ancient Egyptian lost
 an eye he replaced it with kind oi l painted bandage, conceallng the socket l of the lost member. Later on, metallic
 shell was invented to fit in under the eyelid. Glass eyes seem to have been 1 first made at the commencement of the
 present century. The earliest glass eyes
 were solid; the pupil and iris being painted on the rear surface with oil colors. But these, like the rude work l of the ancients, were very poor
 apology for real eyes, and deceived no l one with any eyes to see with, They | had an unalterable, dead, fixed look
 that was little, if anything, better to
 gaze upon than the empty hole they file d would have been. The discovery
 of the value of the eye stump as motor
 was the first step in the manufacture o
 glass eyes oi 8 really deceptive charac' ter. Now some are made whose sham
 it is really next to impossible to detect even by close scrutiny. At casua l glance their counterfeit character passes absolutely undiscovered. There is :
 young society lady here who has worr
 a glass eve from childhood. Vailed by her lovely lashes which she has trained
 to that languid dropping which was :
 historic characteristic of the eyes O
 Napoleon the Third, no one of her many
 intimates dreams that the dark orl
 whose pensive beauty is so much ad
 mired is mere shell of glass
 1 It is in this that the perfection of tn
 eye-maker's art consists, and out of thi that his profit comes. There are pient,
 of glass eyes to be got cheap, like that o the old maid in Mark Twain's story which had to be stuffed around witt
 had such an uncomfortable habit c ' , dropping out in the middle of 8 sermon l and going rattling along the floor like tn ) glass alley of some careless urchin. Bu Q good glass eye costs a good price, and as people who have to wear one gener , ally keep a couple on hand in case of a : accident to which the frail objects ar 5 particularly liable, the eye-maker neve 3 has to complain of dull times. Humal ] beings do not monopolize his labor [ altogether. Glass eyes have been mad , to supply the gaps left by accident in th heads of both dogs and horses, an : these animals learn to wear them, 1t l ayerred, as comfortably as their master q can. It would be about the right thin 8 now for some one to invent false teet f for the same brute benefit. A wei : known sporting man here actually hs Q the teeth of a valuable speeder plugge 2 with silver. :, c If the French have gained u | supremacv of the world in the matter b artificial eye-making, there is one sort T optics which they do not control | 8 manufacture of One of the oldest 1 D dustries of Birmingham England, is t a -x,f .d<slla, ozce Saxe1