In Earle Stanley Gardner's whodunit, The Case of the Counterfeit Eye, a San Francisco eyemaker named Sidney O. Noles solved an optical mystery. Readers who looked up Noles's name in the San Francisco telephone book found it. No fictional character, Eye-Maker Noles sells glass eyes at $10 to $20 apiece, says the detective story was the best advertising he ever had.
Lately Noles has begun making artificial eyes from plastic (Chicago's Mager & Gougelman also make them). Reason: glass-eye glass came from Germany and supplies were dwindling. Now he has decided that plastic eyes (material is similar to that used in...