This article from Dr. Press’s blog, The Vision Help Blog, provides some context and history to one of the many techniques employed at Brighter Outlook Vision when training a patient’s visual processing skills. Here, learn about Renshaw’s cow and some of the history of the tachistoscope procedure we use to increase visual processing speed and help slow readers recognize words faster.
The Renshaw Cowhide
By Leonard J. Press, O.D., FAAO, FCOVD
No doubt you’re familiar with Renshaw’s cow.
Renshaw’s cow, the image above, shows a cow including the head and top half of the body. Can you see it? If not, take another look!
But chances are you’re not as familiar with Renshaw’s cowhide. ⚾️⚾️⚾️ What, you ask, is Renshaw’s connection to baseball?
Part of the story is told in an intriguing book titled The Cloudbuster Nine. It’s a magnificent but heretofore unrecognized part of World War II history told by Anne Keene, the daughter of a young man who in 1943 was the batboy for a special group of baseball players who were training as Navy pilots. The most famous among them was Ted Williams, who took leave form a promising career with the Boston Red Sox and would do so again to fight in the Korean War.
Although the Cloudbusters were well known at the time in the vicinity of their naval training facility in Durham, North Carolina, their signature game took place in an exhibition on July 28, 1943 in Yankee Stadium. Their opposition was a team called the Yanklands, comprised of players from the Yankees and Cleveland Indians, and managed by a retired ballplayer named Babe Ruth. The proceeds for that day, $35,000 was donated to the American Red Cross.
Although the Cloudbusters were well known at the time in the vicinity of their naval training facility in Durham, North Carolina, their signature game took place in an exhibition on July 28, 1943 in Yankee Stadium. Their opposition was a team called the Yanklands, comprised of players from the Yankees and Cleveland Indians, and managed by a retired ballplayer named Babe Ruth. The proceeds for that day, $35,000 was donated to the American Red Cross.
Tom Hamilton, a U.S. Naval Academy Graduate, had been tasked with putting together a training program that was dubbed “The Annapolis of the Air”. Its goal was to train 2,500 naval pilots in four pre-flight centers, one of which was the Durham facility to which Ted Williams was assigned. Before the war, Tom’s older brother, Howard, was a popular Ohio State University political science professor who was aware of the work of fellow OSU faculty member Samuel Renshaw. Keene writes (p. 108):
“For years, Dr. Samuel Renshaw worked in a fourth-floor laboratory on campus to unlock the memory banks of human beings. He believed that people only use about 20 percent of their recall potential for their mind and senses (smell, taste, touch, hearing, and vision). He had pioneered programs with remarkable results for speed reading and was intrigued the way young men could identify the year and make of automobiles from any angle. He used this theory to develop an experimental method using a slide projector to flash images of aircraft and warships on a screen in a fraction of a second, and Hamilton knew his methods had the potential to give the Allies a huge advantage over the enemy.” Renshaw’s heroic role is chronicled in this Time Capsule from the American Psychological Association.
Dr. Samuel Renshaw (1892-1981) was an American experimental psychologist. He generally worked with fast-reading and enhancing the latent ability of the mind.
Keene observes that the Navy Pre-Flight was grounded on hard work and discipline that groomed extraordinary leaders including Presidents George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford, coaches “Bear” Bryant and John Wooden, and astronauts Scott Carpenter and John Glenn, a Marine combat pilot who served as Ted Williams’ wingman in the Korean War. She notes (p. 62) that one of Williams’ roommates in the Pre-Flight Program at Durham was Philip Herold Regan, a cadet who studied at the Massachusetts College of Optometry.
What came to be known as the Renshaw Training Method is recognizable within Optometry as tachistoscopic procedures, and has a long history in visual perception as related to reading, and more recently in Sports Vision. It has been referred to as the “Renshaw Visual Efficiency Training” or the “Renshaw Recognition System”. Jim Scott wrote a wonderful piece in the Toronto Blue Jays Journal titled: Blue Jays, Plate Discipline, and the Renshaw Method.
If you are wondering what good vision has to do with sports, try playing with your eyes closed.
Keene observes that the Navy Pre-Flight was grounded on hard work and discipline that groomed extraordinary leaders including Presidents George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford, coaches “Bear” Bryant and John Wooden, and astronauts Scott Carpenter and John Glenn, a Marine combat pilot who served as Ted Williams’ wingman in the Korean War. She notes (p. 62) that one of Williams’ roommates in the Pre-Flight Program at Durham was Philip Herold Regan, a cadet who studied at the Massachusetts College of Optometry.
What came to be known as the Renshaw Training Method is recognizable within Optometry as tachistoscopic procedures, and has a long history in visual perception as related to reading, and more recently in Sports Vision. It has been referred to as the “Renshaw Visual Efficiency Training” or the “Renshaw Recognition System”. Jim Scott wrote a wonderful piece in the Toronto Blue Jays Journal titled: Blue Jays, Plate Discipline, and the Renshaw Method.
A nice complement to the book is this article that Anne wrote, published on the National WWII Museum site, titled: A Secret History Behind a Bat Boy’s Photograph with Ted Williams.
At Brighter Outlook Vision, we help improve people’s vision so they can more fully engage in their life. If you have a child struggling to read, it could be a vision problem that could be corrected with vision therapy. We can also help young athlete’s improve their vision and speed up their reaction times. Learn more about who we can help or give us a call at 843-203-0200 and we can hear what you are dealing with to see if vision could be at the root of the problem.
