For as long as humans have walked the earth, there have been vision problems, and for most of our history, those afflicted with near or far sightedness had no choice but to shoulder through life through a perpetual blurry haze. Their peers often grouped them in with the blind and other disabled, and they were considered disabled by their peers.
Human ingenuity eventually found a way to solve this problem. There is no accurate data as to who first produced spectacle lenses, but there are numerous accounts in the 1st century of the Roman writer Seneca using a makeshift magnifying glass comprised of a glass globe of water to read.
Fast forward a thousand years and we see the collapse of the Roman Empire and the prevalence of monasteries. The monks who lived in these buildings spent their days poring over documents for transcribing and translating purposes. The usually dim conditions and small type of the text put strains on their eyes, and they developed a device referred to as a “reading stone.” These built upon Seneca’s invention; they used a regular glass sphere laid on top of their tomes for magnifying purposes.
It would take another two hundred years before someone would invent a pair of wearable eye glasses. In Italy, the monk, Allesandro della Spina, fashioned frames made of bone or metal with a quartz lenses. He was forced to make due with this substitute material, as there were technological limitations behind producing spherical lenses in glass.
Glasses continued to slowly grow and evolve over the years, eventually spreading from Europe and making their way into China and Asia. The modern version of eyeglasses that we are all familiar with didn’t have its start until 1727 in Britain. There, the optician Edward Scarlett produced a frame that would be placed over the ears and nose, for ease of use in daily transportation.
So next time you put on a pair of your favorite eyeglasses, take a minute and think back on the long and varied history of what you’re wearing.
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