glasse sstyle 2012: Frames For Glasses

Sunday, 5 August 2012

Frames For Glasses

source(google.com.pk)
Frames For Glasses Biography
For many of us life would obviously be very different if we could not have our visual problems corrected. Imagine not being able to read past the age of forty, or not being able to function at any age if you were too short or long sighted to cross the street or even look out of your window. So who do we have to thank for the wonderful invention of spectacles?
In truth, no one is exactly sure who first came up with the concept of correcting vision. There are several different accounts of the first usage of devices to make us see better. A Roman called Seneca (4BC – AD65) apparently read books through a glass globe filled with water. This magnified the print sufficiently for him to read ‘all the books in Rome’. Aristophanes, a Greek philosopher, (448BC – 380BC) knew that glass could be used to magnify. In 150 AD Ptolemy actually worked on the basic theory of how light travels through glass, and wrote papers on the subject.
In 1268 Roger Bacon was the first to make a scientific comment on spectacles. He knew about using segments of a sphere to magnify letters and small objects, and that elderly people would find this useful.
In 1270 when Marco Polo travelled in China, he noted that Chinese people wore spectacles, and the Chinese reported that glasses came from Arabia in the eleventh century.
Glass blowers in Venice, around the thirteenth century, finally came up with the idea of positioning a lens in a frame, and wearing it in front of the eye, rather than placing a lens on the reading material. This was only for use with one eye, and it was a later invention to hold two lenses in a frame made of wood, bone or horn.
In 1306 in Pisa, a monk mentioned spectacles in a Sermon, but he didn’t say who was responsible for what he called ‘one of the most useful arts on earth’!
In the Middle Ages if you wore spectacles it signified your great knowledge and learning. Portrait artists of the time included glasses in pictures of famous people even if they lived before glasses were invented – such as in the garden of Eden!
The patron Saint of spectacle makers is the religious teacher Sofronius Eusebius Hieronymus 340 – 420AD, and he is portrayed with a Lion, a skull, and a pair of reading glasses.
Many different ideas about the first spectacles ever worn, but no concrete evidence. We can only be grateful to those first pioneers, even if we’re not sure who they were!
In 1452 when the printing press was invented, the necessity for clear sight for reading became more evident. Mass production of inexpensive glasses began, often sold by untrained, unqualified vendors such as Peddlers.
Frames changed in the 1600s when lenses were fixed to a rigid bridge, which kept them in place more efficiently. The Quizzer appeared, a single lens with a handle, and handheld glasses with a scissor action.
This continued up until the mid nineteenth century. The options were fairly limited, with the lower and middle classes wearing frames made of materials such as wood, leather, bone or horn. The rich were able to afford finer, lighter materials such as gold and silver. These tended to be hand held, so although they were much more genteel they were awkward to use! Glasses were made for patients to wear after cataract operations, ‘old sight’, for short sighted people, and the confusing ‘old sight for young people’, which presumably is what we would call long sighted nowadays!
In the seventeen hundreds Benjamin Franklin, frustrated by his short sightedness and need for near vision correction, invented the bifocal. He cut two pairs of glasses in half, put half of each lens in a frame and voila! Bifocals!
In Pre-revolutionary France, Lorgnettes and mini-spy glasses were very fashionable, followed by Pince-Nez. Towards the end of the 18th century side arms were added to glasses, making them more familiar to us today.
The twentieth century saw a revolution in eyewear. Frames were made in plastics and metal alloys, lenses made of lighter weight plastic and thinner glass. Techniques in eye examination and accuracy in lens production moved us forward to the sophisticated, comfortable, practical eyewear we have today. We’ve come a long way from reading books through a globe of water!

Frames For Glasses