Almanac: The eye chart 01:48. And now a page from our "Sunday Morning" Almanac, January 18th, 1908, 107 years ago today . . . the day the Dutch ophthalmologist Herman Snellen died at the age of 73.

The ophthalmologist will ask a person to stand 20 feet away from a chart, cover one eye, and say what they can see. The most common eye chart is a Snellen chart, which displays letters that ...

A Dutch ophthalmologist called Herman Snellen developed a similar chart to Monoyer’s in 1862. The first version used abstract symbols, which were then replaced with letters.

The most commonly-used eye chart was developed by Dutch ophthalmologist Hermann Snellen in 1860s. The Snellen chart typically has 11 rows of large capital letters. The first line is the big letter E.

The Snellen Eye Chart was designed by Dutch ophthalmologist Herman Snellen in 1862 as a means to improve the subjective nature of vision testing, which was usually accomplished by having patients ...

We asked eye doctors about the best vision tests to do at home and the best places to order glasses and lenses at online from places like 1-800 Contacts, Warby Parker, and Zenni Optical.

Ten years later, on average, "they read the line [on the eye chart] above what they used to read ... M.D., a Los Angeles ophthalmologist and long-time vision correction surgery researcher.

ANSWER: We can credit Dr. Hermann Snellen, a Dutch ophthalmologist at the Netherlands Hospital for Eye Patients, with putting the big E on top in 1862.