Ski-Optometer (Woolf Phoropter)

Date: 1913-1917
Museum: National Museum of American History

A phoropter is an optical testing device. Inscriptions on this example read “MICHAEL WOOLF / NEW YORK” and “PAT. DEC. 27, 1910.” Nathan A. Shigon (1868-1920), the inventor, was an optician who was born in Russia and who died in New York. Michael Woolf was a manufacturing optician.

Ref: Nathan A. Shigon, “Refractometer,” U.S. Patent 979,578A (Dec. 27, 1910).

Michael Woolf, ad for the Ski-Optometer, in Optical Journal and Review of Optometry (Sept 5, 1912), p. 1093.

The museum's own record (Smithsonian, National Museum of American History)