New Delhi: Most of us – at some point of our life – have squinted at a bunch of letters of varying sizes at the optician's or ophthalmologist's chamber. But not many of us know that the chart was created more than 100 years ago by French ophthalmologist Ferdinand Monoyer and is known as the Monoyer chart.
Today, Google is celebrating Monoyer’s 181st birth anniversary with a quirky animated doodle.
Monoyer, born on May 9, 1836, also developed the diopter, which is the unit of measurement for vision that is used even today. The diopter measures the distance you’d have to be from text to read it. So, basically, in the chart most of us are familiar with, every row represents a different diopter, from smallest to largest.
Interestingly, Monoyer changed the font of a particular letter if it didn’t suit him. His logic was that if you’re going to judge a person’s vision by it, that letter had better be as legible as possible.
In today’s doodle, the animation plays with the concepts of vision clarity as well as gives a tribute to another of Monoyer’s signatures: his name, hidden in the chart. Have you been able to spot it?
The doodle’s reach spreads over France, of course, as well as the Netherlands, the UK, Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Greece, Canada, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, India, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand.
Monoyer was born in the French food capital of Lyon, and moved to the University of Strasbourg in 1871. He taught at various universities, including the University of Lyon from 1877 to 1909. Monoyer died in his hometown on July 11, 1912, at the age of 76.
