George (Optician) Cox

George Cox, often cataloged as George (Optician) Cox, was a London optician active in the early 1840s. His best-known surviving book, Spectacle Secrets, appeared in 1844 in a second edition, suggesting it had already found enough readers to be reissued.

The book was published by Cox himself at 128 Holborn Hill in London, and it was also sold from addresses on Newgate Street and Barbican. In its preface, he writes for general readers rather than specialists, trying to explain spectacles in plain language and warning against dishonest or showy sellers.

Cox is also connected with early work on trial lenses, and later medical history sources note him as an English optician in the late 1830s. Little else about his life is easy to confirm, which makes Spectacle Secrets especially valuable: it preserves his voice as a practical tradesman who wanted useful science to be understandable to everyday people.