Looking at the world through rose-colored lenses (or some other color)

Reed Black reported a little while back about research showing that intensely blue light produces alertness – and about researchers in Troy, NY, who are working on a device to take advantage of the light’s effect.

Shortly after that aired, I got a call from an OOIDA member named John Tolbert. John said that on the U.S.S. Missouri – the famed battleship on which the Japanese surrendered at the end of World War II – the bridge used blue lights instead of red during battles.

It thought that was pretty interesting – apparently, the Navy knew about this effect for quite some time.

But then John went on to say that he wears yellow-tinted glasses for better vision at night. Just like the blue lights, I had never heard of that before.

So I checked into it. Often, on the Web, they were referred to as yellow-tinted polarized lenses.

I also found a number of references to those lenses being used in hunting and shooting – and being prescribed for folks who have difficulty seeing at night.

Other sites refer to them being use for enhancing color contrast and depth perception.

But a lot of those sites also note that before you use yellow lenses, you should probably talk to your optometrist and make sure they’re right for you.

It may seem like something far less important than what we usually discuss on this blog – the more serious topics of trucking. But what could be more important than being able to see better at night?