I tried an experiment not long ago, an experiment that involved eyesight. The goal was to experience what it's like to be on the cutting edge of vision technology. It was a test that, fortunately or unfortunately, I am well qualified to perform. You see, back in the 1960s, when I was 4 years old, I had a terrible accident. My sister Camille and I had gotten hold of two of those old, long-necked bottles of Pepsi, capped and full of soda. Morons that we were, we began playing The Three Musketeers, fencing with the glass bottles, clacking them together like swords. A shard flew into my right eye; Camille's legs were torn up a bit (our poor parents . . .). Surgery saved my eye, but the sight I have has always been extremely poor. I can just about make out the largest letter on the Snellen visual acuity chart.
Glasses like these, developed by Wentai Liu and Chris DeMarco at North Carolina State University in Raleigh in collaboration with Johns Hopkins, may one day, along with a retinal implant, help the blind see. Harry Woehrle, a research subject at Hopkins, models the glasses: The tiny camera on the frame transmits an analog signal that is digitized and sent on its way— with luck— to the brain.
Luckily my left eye is fine, but I wanted to find out how well I could get around with my right. I put cotton and tape over my good eye and took a walk. The room was brightly lit. I could make out doorways and see furniture as vague shapes, enough to distinguish a chair from a desk. I made my way outside to the newsstand and bought Wint O Green LifeSavers without tripping or falling. I couldn't watch TV. I certainly couldn't read. I couldn't really recognize faces. But I could see a friend hold her arms wide to give me a hug.
It wasn't much. But even the vision in my bad eye would mean the world to people like Harry Woehrle, who was blinded by retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary disease that destroys the photoreceptor cells of the eye. He began to lose his sight as a young man. Now he can barely remember his children's faces. Recently remarried, he has never seen his wife, Carol.
