The Brief History of Eye Glasses

I've realized that contact lenses have been getting a lot of blog love lately. To balance out the coverage, here is the (brief) history of eye glasses.

In the history of the world, glasses are relatively a new invention for something that feels so important now. About a 1,000 years ago, the first corrective vision tool called a "reading stone" was used by polishing glass that was in the shape of a sphere. Essentially, it was the first magnifying glass. The reason it took so long for a corrective vision aid of any sort to be created was simple due to the fact that not many people knew how to read. It wasn't until monks suffered from age related vision problems in the 1200's and wanted to read that a need for eye glasses was created.



Fast forward another 200 years, an Italian is credited for making the first pair of wearable eye glasses. They were made from all sorts of materials that sound ridiculous now considering optical lenses and plastic dominate most eye ware fashion. Quartz, leather, bone and metal were common materials used. It also wasn't until the 1700's did eye glasses have a standard method of attaching to people's faces with the ear pieces. Solutions involved looping string around the ears, it wasn't until about another 100 years until ear pieces were added.

Around the same time as ear pieces, Benjamin Franklin invented bifocals. Reportedly, he hated switching between glasses for distance and up close vision. I'd imagine it was like how the Snuggie was invented, someone was tired of having to switch between being in a blanket and not. Franklin's invention of putting two lenses of two different powers on top of each other paved the way of other advances like correcting astigmatisms. One common thread throughout the history of eye is that people have been embarrassed or self conscious of wearing them since the beginning. The upper classes and royalty in Europe would only wear glasses in private.



I'll leave the history here. From the time Ben Franklin invented bifocals, the biggest innovation since then is the ear pieces that help balance glasses, the kind that is ubiquitous now. There are a few other things, and the advancements in the Optometry profession but the point was to explain the genesis of eye glasses.