Rayner’s First Victory

In May 1918, the Rayner Optical Company was formed and took a lease on the property at 15 Arundel Mews, Kemp Town, Brighton; to be developed as the Company’s optical workshop. Although only spectacle prescription glazing had been planned for this workshop, the new company immediately found itself taken over by the Ministry of Munitions to manufacture optical instruments for the war effort.

After the war, when the Rayner Optical Company reverted to its originally planned role of prescription work for the growing number of Company branches, the optical instrument skills were retained in a separate department that would some 30 years later play an important part in the development of the first intraocular lens.