I made my 3 year opticians apprentiship in a well known, upper echelon retail optical store and lab in Lausanne Switzerland in the mid 1950s.
The lab in the back of the store was triangular, had 2 ceramic edgers that were belt driven, an AO diamond cutter, a gas soldering device, a gas Bunsen burner to heat the then only available nitrate plastic frames. (You should have seen them go up flames sometimes). As of my second year I did most of the lab work.
We had as regular customers a many famous poeple getting their glasses there while living or visiting Switzerland.
I just name one of them on this first post. It was Charlie Chaplin and his last wife Oona O'Neill, they were both pleasant people. She was to young (21) to need glasses. A frequent visitor to the store, he used to buy frames with Kryptok and single vision glass lenses, no PALs known then.
Born born in Walworth, London, England on April 26th, 1889 Chaplin died of natural causes on December 25, 1977 at his home in Vevey, Switzerland. In 1978, Chaplin's corpse was stolen from its grave and was not recovered for three months; he was re-buried in a vault surrounded by cement.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000122/bio
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