Southbridge, Mass.
Thursday, April 2, 1953.
On March 21, 1953, President W. A. Stewart presented to the Optical
Soceity of America dies for the Edgar D. Tillyer Medal, which AO has created
for biennal award by the society for outstanding scientific contributions
in the field of vision.
The presentation was made at a banquet at the annual meeting of the
society, at which Dr. Tillyer was a guest. Dr Brian O'Brien, AO Vice President
in charge of Research and also president of the society, gave the acceptance
speech.
37 Years at AO
The medal is a tribute to the achievements of Dr. Tillyer's 37 year
career in research for AO. Outstanding among his many developments in the
field of vision are the Tillyer lenses, first complete series of spectacle
lenses correcting both spherical and cylindrical marginal errors to a practical
minimum.
Dr Tillyer gained his first fame as an astronomer. Associated with the
Naval Observatory and Nautical Almanac Office from 1902 to 1911, his first
achievements were in standardizing clocks. Through improvements in temperature
control devices and other changes, he reduced the daily error by a factor
of five. Since then, others have been able to reduce the error only by
a factor of 10.
Development in Defense
He later became chief of section on image-forming instruments for the
Bureau of Standards and devised the optical system still in use on all
submarine periscopes today. He assisted the Navy in the revision of all
naval gun sights.
Other accomplishments included a speedy method for making Schmidt corrector
plates, which led to television projection, and a method for producing
quartz crystal oscillators in shear vibration, by which many tens of millions
were made for communications instruments during World War 11.
A native of Dover N.J., he is a graduate of Rutgers and was awarded
an honary degree of Doctor of Science by his Alma Mater.
The first Edgar D. Tillyer Medal will be awarded by the society in 1954.