The Fascinating Development Of Eye Glasses

December 5th, 2009 Posted in Eye & Vision

The fascinating development of eye glasses over the centuries shows us that some inventions we thought were fairly modern actually have been around for far longer than we would have thought possible. This is the case with glasses, which have been with us in at least a tangential way since the ancient Egyptians. Indeed, these assistive devices have a long and proud history.

The technical definition of “spectacles, ” or “glasses” today are that they are frames that hold lenses which are then placed in front of a person’s eyes to aid in correcting vision, in protecting the eyes from harm or to guard against ultraviolet radiation or all three at once. Given the development of fashion, it should all be said that some are worn strictly for fashion purposes nowadays.

As a matter of development through the centuries, there have been a number of versions of spectacles that have made their appearance. Different versions include the monocle, which is a single glass, scissors-glasses — which were in style and’th century France, in particular, and featured Y-shaped frames. These spectacles were used to correct vision issues related to distance.

Scholars have identified references to the ability to use glass to magnify going back as far as the ancient Egyptians of nearly 2800 years past. There are writings from the first century from a teacher of the Roman ruler Nero that mention how looking through a glass of water could improve the ability to read writing, and Nero is known to have used a gemstone to look at writings.

The ninth century Arab inventor Abbas Ibn Firnas came up with a kind of lens which he used to read small letters and other tiny writing. At that time they were known as reading stones and they came into wide usage for a time. The convex lens is thought to have been discussed in certain early-the 11th century scholarly books related to optics and a model may even have been produced.

Much of the development of eyeglasses seems to have occurred at various points in the-th century. There are books from the year 1235 that discussed how to produce shaped glass that could be used to improve vision, while the Chinese seem to have made fashion sunglasses that were useful in cutting down on glare, though they did not contain any vision-corrective properties.

It is thought that the first actual and vision-corrective glasses made their appearance sometime between 1280 and-00 in Italy. Many scholars think that the actual year was 1284, meaning that real, true eyeglasses have been with us for quite a while. It was Benjamin Franklin himself who invented the first pair of bifocals, while true corrective lenses began to appear sometime around’25.

Since then, eye glasses have only become more precise, more durable and even more fashionable — within the bounds of what is considered fashion at any one point in time. They have made life just a bit easier to bear for nearly a thousand years on, having been formally created in the late-th century, and they show no signs of losing their importance any time soon.

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