5,000 GLASS EYES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 October 1942, Page 3

5,000 GLASS EYES

CAME FROM ENGLISH FACTORY LAST YEAR. German prisoners are among the thousands who have been given glass eyes by a Government factory in the north of England. It issued 5,000 eyes last year, and close upon 600 of them went to civilians who had lost an eye in the air raids. The factory supplies the Navy, the Army and the R.A.F.; the Allied Forces including the Poles, the Fighting French, the Norwegians and the Czechs; the A.T.S., the W.A.A. F.’s and other women’s Services. They have even sent eyes out to the troops in the Middle East. The factory was working in a small way in peace time for men who had lost an eye in the last war. They used to get their glass from Germany. It is made in Britain today.

The glass comes to the factory in long tubes and rods. A glass tube is heated over a gas burner; the worker blows through it and makes a bulb in the middle; one end is snapped off, and work on the eye begins. The bulb is again heated as are rods of coloured glass which are pressed upon the bulb to form the pupil and iris. Crystal glass is worked in for

the cornea and little red veins are marked out with tiny strands of red glass. It is often a difficult job to match up the colouring for there is no standardisation. Each eye depends upon the patient himself. Glass eyes are coming in for renewal at the rate of 250 a week.