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In 1855 he moved to full professor at the University of Bonn. For personal reasons, he
would later transfer to the University of Heidelburg. Now, what Herman really contributed to
clinical engineering was the reinvention of the ophthalmoscope. Being a physician, he used
this in his lectures, his labs, and his own personal practice. He came up with a crude experiment to look into the eye and observe the retina. He called it an Augenspiegel (eye mirror): The name 'ophthalmoscope' (eye-observer) did not come into common use until three
years later in 1854. Even though he built his ophthalmoscope years after Babbage, he was
credited for building it without prior knowledge of Charles work. (I think he may have
Googled it). He made it public and sold his invention as where Charles did not. If you came
across an ophthalmoscope during that time period, it most likely would have been constructed using cardboard with an aperture hole, glue, and different sized concave mirrors.
The heavy use of this instrument had become a reason to allow physicians to diagnose ocular diseases and prevent blindness. We hope you enjoyed this narrative on ophthalmoscopes.
The image to the left shows a reconstruction of
Babbage's ophthalmoscope, c. 1847. No actual
example survives but this replica was made for the
museum in 2003, based upon Wharton Jones'
written description.