“Sign in an optometrist’s window: Eyes examined while you wait.” A once-common newspaper filler, and also the subject of many cartoons and comic strips, the funny optometrist’s sign may be based on ads (and window signs?) for jewelry stores, which in the early twentieth century often had optical departments. I suppose while customers waited for their watch or ring (say) to be examined or retrieved, they could have their eyes looked at, too. I supply three examples of jewelry store ads; also one from an eye doctor that states: “Cross Eyes Examined While You Wait.”
TV Girls and Gags, vol. 6, no. 3, May 1959, pp. 68-9.
The Evening Times (Cumberland, MD), 12 September 1903, p. 5.
Excerpt from “Watch Your Watch,” a 7-paragraph ad in the Catskill Mountain News (Margaretville NY), 20 Nov. 1903, p. 10. Herbert Vermilyea was a jeweler and watchmaker.
The Syracuse (NY) Herald, 5 Feb. 1904, p. 16.
Boston Post, 23 January 1906, p. 2.
