Anyone who’s been to an optometrist will recognize the test – if not its name, retinoscopy – in which the practitioner places different lenses before one’s eyes, to arrive at and simulate a winning prescription. It’s an apt...

At just 50 years into the so-called “Digital Revolution,” today’s consumers and work force take for granted the fact that — up until the early 1980s — all of the household gadgets, business machines, and industrial...