Why President Reagan Wore Only One Contact Lens When He Gave a Speech
Around 1920, a small town in Illinois.
A boy of nine or ten stood in front of a visiting nurse.
An eye test.
That day, the boy learned for the first time
that trees had leaves,
that butterflies flew over the fields.
Until then, a tree had been a green blob, and butterflies had not existed.
The boy's name was Ronald Reagan.
How myopia chose a boy's seat
Reagan later recalled those years in his autobiography.
He always sat in the front row. He could not see the blackboard otherwise.
It embarrassed him.
Now and then a ball hit him. He never saw it coming.
Around the time he entered high school, he got glasses.
As a college football player, his biographers write, his field of vision was the square yard of turf occupied by the opposing team's guard.
He threw himself at it anyway.
Contact lenses the moment he became an actor
In the late 1930s, Reagan went to Hollywood.
The Reagan Presidential Library's list of facts puts it this way:
"Began wearing contact lenses when he began his acting career, which was shortly after they first became available."
Contact lenses at the time were hard scleral lenses covering the whole front of the eye.
A few hours in, the eyes hurt.
Even so, glasses were not an option for an actor.
On camera, glasses become a character. The roles Reagan played were not men in glasses.
When the Second World War came, his eyesight was the reason he was found unfit for combat units. He was assigned to a unit at home that made training films.
A president's speaking technique
In 1981, Reagan became president at 69.
To his myopia, presbyopia had now been added.
The age at which neither far nor near is clear.
In 1987 the Washington Post described his lenses:
"Reagan, who is both nearsighted and presbyopic, wears rigid gas-permeable lenses. Sometimes, when delivering a speech, he wears only one lens so he can both see the audience, with the corrected eye, and read the speech with the other."
One eye for distance, one eye for near.
The method has a name.
Monovision.
How monovision works
A myopic eye focuses naturally at close range.
A lens pushes that focus out to the distance.
Take the lens out, and the focus comes back in close.
Reagan simply used that property.
The right eye (or the left) wears a lens and sees the faces in the audience.
The other eye, without a lens, reads the script on the lectern.
The two eyes look at different distances, but the brain picks whichever image it needs in the moment.
It is still one of the methods an optometrist may suggest to a lens wearer whose presbyopia has arrived: one eye set for distance, the other for near.
There is a price
Monovision is not free.
When the two eyes are not looking at the same distance, depth perception drops.
Distance judgement blurs.
At night, the uncorrected eye adds more glare and halos.
That is why many people use it "when needed," not "always."
So did Reagan. The Washington Post's word is "sometimes." He took one lens out for a specific situation: the speech.
Today, on the same principle, there are multifocal lenses that put both distances into one lens. The options when presbyopia begins are covered in At 43, the Restaurant Menu Suddenly Moved Away.
Why vision smears at night continues in Why Does Contact Lens Vision Blur at Night?.
Leaves and a script
The boy who first saw leaves at nine
watched the audience with one eye, and read his script with the other, at seventy.
His eyesight put him in the front row, kept him from the battlefield, and made him take one lens out at the lectern.
What changed was not the eyes but the tool.
And how to use the tool is, in the end, something you decide together with someone who knows eyes.
References
- Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Facts about Ronald Reagan — childhood myopia, glasses in high school, contact lenses as an actor
- Washington Post, Who Should Wear Contacts — and Who Shouldn't (21 July 1987) — rigid lenses, one lens for speeches
- Doctor Zebra, Health and Medical History of President Ronald Reagan — autobiography citations (the nurse, leaves and butterflies, the front row, unfit for combat units)
- CooperVision, Monovision Contact Lenses — how monovision works
This article provides general information. Monovision is a correction method an eye-care professional decides on after a trial fitting; removing one lens on your own and then driving or operating machinery can be dangerous.