I Was a Teenage Optical Engineer

Lawrence Talbot, the Wolf Man of Universal horror films of the 1940s was played by Lon Chaney, Jr. Surprisingly, the character was an optical engineer in the original movie. He installed a telescope in the Talbot family home. In the original script, in fact, he is not even a relative of the family, but was brought in explicitly to install the telescope. Few things in a movie script are left to chance, but are either inspired by events, or else have some symbolic significance. Why did screenwriter Curt Siodmak settle upon someone in Optics for this role, when he might have used any profession as a means of inserting his character into the story?

Erratum

In the 42(5), October 2016, issue of Journal of Oral Implantology, the article titled, "Accuracy of Dynamic Navigation for Dental Implant Placement-Model-Based Evaluation," by Robert W. Emery, Scott A. Merritt, Kathryn Lank, and Jason D. Gibbs was published with an incomplete Acknowledgment. The correct Acknowledgment statement is as follows: "This work was conducted using a grant provided by X-Nav Technologies, LLC. Robert W. Emery is the Chief Medical Officer of X-Nav Technologies, LLC, and has an equity interest in X-Nav Technologies, LLC. Scott A. Merritt is the Chief Optical Engineer of X-Nav Technologies, LLC. Jason D. Gibbs is a Software Engineer at X-Nav Technologies, LLC."

Through A Cracked Lens: Alternate Views Of Light Microscopy. Part I: Why Does My Microscope Have A Pupil?

Let's face it, optics is a fascinating field, but it can bore you to death. My purpose in writing these articles is to show that there are simple, intuitive ways to look at microscopes that can illuminate rather than bore. I have been an optical engineer for many years and have observed many unique ways of looking at optical instruments. I hope that I can share my enthusiasm and insight for light and its manipulation and give some insights that microscopisis may have missed. The microscope is particularly interesting because the glass lenses often do more than one job at the same time. Most of the principles of optical microscopy are directly transferable to electron microscopy, and I will point out specific cases as I go along.