The Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London, UK.
The Company was founded by a Royal Charter of Charles I in 1629 AD; it was granted the status of a Livery Company in 1809. The Company was empowered to set regulations and standards for optical devices; this was eroded by the Industrial Revolution, after which mechanical advancements made trade restrictions difficult to enforce. The Company acquired the right, however, to set examinations that opticians had to pass before practising. This power was surrendered to the British College of Ophthalmic Opticians (now titled the College of Optometrists) in 1979, who took over the examination of optometrists, and in 1986 power of examination for dispensing opticians was surrendered to the Association of British Dispensing Opticians (ABDO).
Now, the Company supports charities, including Vision Aid Overseas, and research in the field of optics and conducts training and professional development including the two-year correspondence course for optical technicians that has national accredication in the British National Qualifications Framework.
The Spectacle Makers' Company ranks sixtieth in the order of precedence for Livery Companies.
Famous quotes containing the words company, spectacle and/or makers:
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—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“My curiosity to see the melancholy spectacle of the executions was so strong that I could not resist it, although I was sensible that I would suffer much from it.... I got upon a scaffold near the fatal tree so that I could clearly see all the dismal scene.... I was most terribly shocked, and thrown into a very deep melancholy.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)