Description
Can you see the six colour-coded strings hanging below each of these wooden eyeballs? In this "Ophthalmotrope", or "Moving Eye" model, each string represents an eye muscle. Pull a string and it demonstrates how that muscle moves the eye. You can also move them in combination.

Human eyes are adapted to respond to light, just as our ears are to sound. Light waves bend through the lens onto the retina at the back of your eye. The information is carried to your brain through the optic nerve. The six eye muscles, working together, make the incredibly precise movements that enable us to read, blink, and look all around.



22/07/2024
Created by: Hannah Price on 22/07/2024

Description
This model was designed by the German-American ophthalmologist Hermann Jakob Knapp (1832–1911) as a teaching aid to demonstrate the control of the eye by the six ocular muscles. The ball representing the eye sits in a socket joint. Six coloured threads are attached to the ‘eye’ and represent the ocular muscles that control its movement. The strings can be manipulated to show a series of eye motions ranging from simple movement that engages a single ‘muscle’ to more complex movements that engage multiple ocular muscles. Born in Prussia, Knapp was awarded his medical degree from Giessen University in 1854. As Professor of Physiology at Heidelberg University, Knapp lectured on ophthalmology until he immigrated to New York City in 1868. There he founded the New York Ophthalmic and Aural Institution.

05/11/2013
Created by: Allison Ksiazkiewicz on 05/11/2013