The Cheap Yet Effective Pinhole Glasses

By Author: Mike Lamb
Total Articles: 62
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Most people know little or nothing about pinhole glasses. Pinhole glasses are not made of glass at all but of an opaque substance such as metal or plastic. The user looks through any of the many small holes in the material. These holes have the effect of reducing the width of the bundle of diverging rays coming from each point on the viewed object.

Traditional pinholes have flat or slightly curved lenses of plastic with actual holes punched through them. Ultraviolet light is reduced because the holes restrict the amount of light that reaches the eyes. Modern pinholes have solid, curved lenses of the same clear plastic used for prescription glasses. The lenses provide full untraviolet protection. The pinhole pattern is printed on the back in ink and a mild mirror coating is added to the front to help hide the pinhole pattern from others.

An easy way to demonstrate this is to make a fist and put it up to one eye while closing the other eye. Open the fist just enough to create a small hole to look through. If you have a refractive error, you should see more ...
... clearly this way. This same improvement in the vision takes place when someone squints to see more clearly. The upper and lower eyelids cut off the rays that would normally enter the top and bottom of the pupil and the vision improves somewhat. Since there is no similar way to cut off rays entering the sides of the pupil, these rays still contribute to the blurred vision.

Looking through pinhole glasses instead of squinting cuts off the peripheral rays from all sides. Since the glasses are so close to the eye, the material between the holes is greatly out of focus and is not as disturbing as one might think. After a period of getting used to the glasses, the brain tends to ignore the presence of the material.

Also of interest is that the farther away the viewed object is, the less the pinholes are noticed. The honeycomb effect of the holes is more noticeable when reading a book held close to the eyes, because the eyes are focused just a short distance in front of the glasses. When looking at a distant TV, however, the holes are hardly visible at all since the eyes are focused much farther away. Also, because of the distance, you can view the entire TV screen through one hole, an obvious benefit. These glasses are inexpensive and extremely effective. So go get yourself a pair today.


Mike has been writing and publishing articles about health products. He recently came across a website on pinhole glasses which gave information about this old technique of using pinhole glasses for eyesight correction. Here's an article about pinhole glasses.