Your Daily Facts about Eyeglasses
This morning my wife and I went and had our eyes examined. Very thorough and took a bit of time. Then came the picking out of the right frames for each of us. And that is where I wondered about eyeglasses.
About 30.8 million people purchase new glasses each year and yet few know about their production, history and life cycle.
Although Nero used emerald-colored lenses to view the gladiator games in A.D. 60, it’s questionable whether he could actually see better. The first “reading glass” was developed around A.D. 1000 but was more of a magnifying glass than an eyeglass. Most historians believe the first eyeglasses were invented in 1284 or 1285. No one knows if the inventor was a monk, a scientist, or a craftsman, but all agree that the inventor was Italian.
In the 1300s eyeglasses were a luxury used by the rich as a symbol of their wealth and power. However, when Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1456, the history of eyeglasses changed forever. Because of the widespread availability of books, the use of reading glasses gradually filtered down to the common people and became an important part of everyday life.
However, eyeglasses still had a long way to go. Finding a pairthat helped the wearer see better was a time-consuming process of trying on one pair after another until sight improved. In the seventeenth century the Spanish invented the first graded lenses, which solved the problem of the trial-and-error fitting of eyeglasses.
Until the eighteenth century, eyeglasses either balanced precariously on the nose or were held by the rim with one hand. Finally, an optician in Paris added short arms that extended to the temples, and an optician in England carried the idea further by extending the arms to the ears. This became the world standard for eyeglass frames.
We do know that the first artistic depiction of eyeglasses was painted by Tommaso da Modena in his 1352 portrait of Hugh of Provence. The religious scholar is seen with his glasses studiously perched on his nose.
Today, most glasses are made of plastics, rather than glass, to prevent breaking. This process requires the use of petroleum. Plastic often comprises the frames of eyeglasses as well, with the exception of luxury brand wood frames and metal titanium frames.
Additionally, anti-reflective, anti-scratch and hydrophobic (water-resistant) coatings on plastic lenses require the use of a variety of chemicals.
Early sunglasses served a special purpose and it wasn’t to block the rays of the sun. Smoke tinting was the first means of darkening eyeglasses, and the technology was developed in China prior to 1430. These darkened lenses were not vision-corrected, nor were they initially intended to reduce solar glare. For centuries, Chinese judges had routinely worn smoke-colored quartz lenses to conceal their eye expressions in court. A judge’s evaluation of evidence as credible or mendacious was to remain secret until a trial’s conclusion.
Sunglasses came on the scene in 1929 when a young innovator, Sam Foster, convinced the Woolworth’s store on the Atlantic City Boardwalk to sell his new brand of sunglasses – Foster Grant. They became an instant sensation in the 1930’s when worn by the era’s most popular movie stars! The American culture has Sam Foster to thank for making something like eye protection from UVA and UVB rays look so cool and hip!
In the 1930s, the Army Air Corps commissioned the optical firm of Bausch & Lomb to produce a highly effective spectacle that would protect pilots from the dangers of high-altitude glare. Company physicists and opticians perfected a special dark-green tint that absorbed light in the yellow band of the spectrum.
With World War II brewing in 1936, Ray Ban designed anti-glare aviator style sunglasses, using polarized lens technology newly created by Edwin H. Land, founder of the Polaroid Corporation.
They also designed a slightly drooping frame perimeter to maximally shield an aviator’s eyes, which repeatedly glanced downward toward a plane’s instrument panel. Fliers were issued the glasses at no charge, and the public in 1937 was able to purchase the model that banned the sun’s rays as Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses.
According to Unite for Sight, the global need for glasses includes:
* Over one billion people in developing countries need eyeglasses but cannot afford them.
* 25 percent of the global population needs eyeglasses.
* 50 percent of children in institutions for the blind in Africa would be able to read normal or large print if they had eyeglasses.
* The price for glasses in many African countries can exceed three months’ average salary.
* Despite this need, over four million pairs of eyeglasses are thrown away each year in North America.