The History of Eyeglasses

One of the world’s most important inventions is generally taken for granted these days. According to a 1999 feature article in Newsweek Magazine, eyeglasses are one of the most important inventions of the past 2000 years. Imagine what life would be like not being able to see images clearly or sharply.

Society has been around for about twenty thousand years. Spectacles didn’t appear until just over seven hundred years ago. Before that time, nearsighted youth endured a world that was clear only to within four to five feet from where they stood. Farsightedness, and more specifically, presbyopia, typically brought on by the aging process, affected almost everyone. Active, productive members of society had to stop working, writing, reading, and using their hands for skillful tasks at a relatively young age.

Eyeglasses developed because of the work of artisans, such as glassmakers, jewelers and clockmakers, along with some of the most brilliant scientific minds over the centuries. The fact that many of these people who relied on keen eyesight, suffered from the aging of their vision, probably led many of them to address this issue.

Reading stone

Sometime between the year 1000 and 1250 crude technology began to develop regarding reading stones, which were simple magnifiers. Roger Bacon in his 1268 ‘Opus Majus’, noted that letters could be seen better and larger when viewed through less than half a sphere of glass. Bacon’s experiments  confirmed the principle of the convex (converging) lens, which had been described earlier by Alhazen, the  Arabian mathematician, optician and astronomer at Cairo.

Glasses probably first appeared in Pisa, Italy about the year 1286. The magnifying lenses for reading were set into bone, metal, or leather mountings, shaped like two small magnifying glasses with the handles riveted together to form an inverted “V” shape that could be balanced on the Bridge of the nose. The lenses were formed from two primitive convex shaped pieces of glass or crystal stones.

The first specific mention of eyeglasses is in an Italian manuscript from 1289, written by a member of the di Popozo family.  The author wrote, “I am so debilitated by age that without the glasses known as spectacles, I would no longer be able to read or write. These have recently been invented for the benefit of poor old people whose sight has become weak.”

In 1306, Giordano da Rivalto, a monk in Pisa, Italy, remarked in a sermon, “it is not yet twenty years since the art of making spectacles, one of the most useful arts on earth, was discovered. I myself have seen and conversed with the man who made them first.”  But the name of the inventor was never mentioned.  Rivalto coined the word occhiali (eyeglasses) and its use began to spread throughout Italy and Europe.

Letters from the dukes of Milan, Francesco and Galeazzo Maria Sforza, dated 1462 and 1466 respectively, reveal the first detailed information about spectacles; namely, that Florence was producing both convex and concave lenses in great quanities. Documentation available from this time period names fifty-two spectacle makers working between 1413 and 1562 and the location of their shops.

Eyeglasses began to be manufactured in England beginning in the 15th century, and other centers of production like Germany, France, and Netherlands began to appear more frequently in documented sources by the sixteenth century.

The oldest known pictorial representation of eyeglasses is a fresco painted by Tommaso da Modena in 1352 and shows Cardinal Hugh of Provence wearing a pair of rivet spectacles.

Domenico Ghirlandajo included spectacles in his painting of St. Jerome at his desk in 1480, even though he had died a thousand years prior to the first eyeglasses being made. The glasses were added to the painting as a symbol of scholarship. For this specific reason and since he was the first person to translate the bible into Latin, St. Jerome was adopted as the patron saint of Librarians, Scholars and Translators and Writings, and by the French as the patron saint of spectacle-makers.

The earliest glasses discovered thus far have been an incomplete pair of rivet spectacles found under the floorboards during the 1953 renovations to Kloster Wienhausen in northern Germany, dating to the early 15th century.

Pilgrim glasses and case

By the time of Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press around 1450, glasses were already used by artisans as well as monks and other religious scholars. Then once books were made available to everyone, the demand and subsequent popularity of spectacles rose dramatically. By the end of the 15th century, spectacle peddlers were a common sight on the streets of Western Europe. The demand increased even more after 1665, when the first newspaper, the London Gazette, appeared.

Bifocals or split lenses were improvised by Benjamin Franklin. They were made by halving lenses of differing powers and positioning the segments together with a straight line across the middle. The upper portion was ground for distance vision while the lower portion was ground for the near vision. He was wearing them by the mid 1780’s. Franklin wrote to London philanthropist George Whatley in May 1785, “as I wear my own glasses constantly, I have only to move my eyes up or down, as I want to see distinctly far or near, the proper glasses being always ready.” Franklin’s split lens bifocal was the first “no-jump” bifocal, one hundred years ahead of its time, because the distant optical center, the near optical center, and the combined optical center were all at the same point.

Sliding temple glasses

John McAllister, Sr. established the first optical shop in America in Philadelphia in 1783. Until the War of 1812, he imported all of the spectacles sold in his shop. However, as a result of the conflict, the major trade embargo with Great Britain forced all Americans to rethink their dependence on imported goods. McAllister, a perfectionist, began producing his own gold and silver frames in 1815. Astigmatic lenses came into being in the U.S. in 1828 when McAllister and his son John, Jr. began importing cylindrical lenses for the correction of astigmatism.

Besides McAllister, there are over three hundred different maker and retailer marks found on American spectacle frames from the 1820’s and 1830’s.

Monocle

Monocles were introduced around 1720, but didn’t reach the height of their popularity until the 1880’s on into the early 20th century. Aristocrats commonly used monocles as a status symbol and fashion statement.

Pince-nez appeared in the 1840’s, but weren’t particularly popular until the late 1800s. They continued to be worn well into the twenties. By the thirties, however, there was increased emphasis on style in glasses with a variety of spectacles available. Meta Rosenthal wrote in 1938 that the pince-nez was still being worn by dowagers, headwaiters, old men, and a few others.

Pince nez