Eye Glasses And Their Development Over The Years

By Adam Webster

Eye glasses and their development over the years shows us how things that we assume to be much more modern than they really are can trace their lineage back to the ancient world, in some cases. This is the actual case with glasses or spectacles, which has been with us in some fashion going back to when the Egyptian pharaohs and their civilization was the dominant power in the world.

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.

Eye glass development has occurred down through the centuries in a number of ways. There had also been different types of spectacles that have come and gone over the years. This includes the once-popular monocle and the French scissors-glasses, which were in high style in the 1700s in France and which were used to help correct distance vision problems.

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.

Other developments in lens technology occurred around the year 1235, when optical glass was mentioned to have the incredible ability to enable one to read even the smallest of letters from a great distance. On a side note, fashionable sunglasses seem to have made an appearance in China, and are mentioned in writings in the China of the 12th century or thereabouts as a way to cut down on glare.

It is thought that the first actual and vision-corrective glasses made their appearance sometime between 1280 and 1300 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 1825.

Since then, eye glasses have been a part of our lives in ways both big and small. People of all ages where them nowadays almost without a second thought and, in many instances, life would not be bearable without them, especially when considering the vision problems that many people are either born with or develop. They have had a long life with us, as a matter of fact. - 29955

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