The Vision Museum
How your eye turns light into sight — from Alcmaeon's first dissection to the bionic retina. Explore the anatomy, simulate color blindness, find your blind spot, and trace 2,500 years of figuring out how we see.
The Human Eye
Light enters through the cornea (which does ~⅔ of the focusing), passes through the pupil (the iris's variable aperture), gets fine-tuned by the lens, and lands on the retina — where 6 million cones and 120 million rods turn photons into action potentials.
The Collection
42 artifacts spanning anatomy, history, color science, correction, instruments, and comparative animal vision. Click any card to copy its description.
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25 Centuries of Sight
From 500 BC (Alcmaeon's first dissection) to 2011 (Argus II retinal implant FDA approval) — figuring out the eye and learning to repair it.
Hands-on Instruments
Hands-on demonstrations of color vision deficiencies, your blind spot, and visual acuity at standard viewing distances.
See the world through different cone configurations. About 8% of men have some form of color vision deficiency — most commonly deuteranomaly (shifted green cone).
Cover your LEFT eye. Fix your right eye on the +. Slowly slide your face closer or further from the screen. At some point — usually ~15° off-center — the ● will vanish. That's your blind spot, where the optic nerve exits the retina.
Typical viewing: 30 cm from screen. If the dot never disappears, increase the distance slider and move closer to the screen.
'20/20' means you can read at 20 feet what a normal eye reads at 20 feet. '20/40' means at 20 feet you need letters twice as big. Adjust your acuity fraction and see how big the critical letter must be at a given distance.