Eyeglasses Were Originally Used to Hiding the Judge’s Eye Expressions
The history of sunglasses
Pre-Origin
The earliest record of eyeglasses dates back to prehistoric times. Inuit peoples (indigenous people of the Arctic region) worn the goggle-like slabs made out of walrus ivory, spruce, bone, and some other materials. It looked nothing like the one we have got.
It might have been used as a protection against snow blindness caused by the Ultraviolet (UV) Rays from the sun bouncing off the snow. (Snow is highly reflective of UV rays)
In a similar time frame, it is hypothesized that Romans also discovered the magnifying nature of the glasses and made magnifying glasses with the sphere.
The Origin
Moving some years forward, enter the 12th Century and we are located in China. Smoked quartz was cut as thin slabs. The smoked quartz was dark, helping a bit to reduce glare. It is hypothesized that those were the first kind of glasses, that today’s glasses take their roots from.
Those glasses didn’t protect the eyes by blocking UV rays nor had vision correction property but, played one important purpose: The Chinese Judges used them for centuries to hide their emotions from the accused.
Where words are restrained, the eyes often talk a great deal.
Samuel Richardson
Eyeglasses for farsightedness were discovered in the 13th Century, and for farsightedness, in the 14th Century. People with astigmatism had to wait till the 18th Century.
In the 13th Century, the first known wearable eyeglasses were made in Italy and were vision corrected.
Many historians believe that the magnifying glasses with frames were first made in Pisa, North Italy. But several hypotheses point that Europeans got their hands on the eyeglasses through the Arabs. Glasses were mostly used by monks of those times and grew in popularity among Europeans during the renaissance period (14th — 17th Centuries).
Renaissance artworks serve as the best testimony, showing us the discovery and the growth in popularity of eyeglasses during that period.
The discovery of corrective glasses was highly regarded and welcomed. Owning eyeglasses were regarded as a status symbol for intelligence and prosperity.
“It is not yet twenty years since there was found the art of making eyeglasses, which make for good vision… And it is so short a time that this new art, never before extant, was discovered. … I saw the one who first discovered and practiced it, and I talked to him.”
- Giordano da Pisa, Dominican friar, 1306.
The development that took place after 17th Century
In the late 17th Century, people understood the working principle of the concave and the convex lens. Concave lenses are used for correcting nearsightedness and the convex lenses, for correcting farsightedness.
Benjamin Franklin invented the bifocal lenses, which are used for correcting both nearsightedness and farsightedness. He achieved that by placing one half of the convex lens with another half of the concave lens.
The 18th Century came in and experiments were done with blue/green tinted lenses to improve poor eyesight by James Ayscough, an English Optician.
On one side, several scientists were developing these glasses but on the other side, there was no manufacturing at scale. It was only after the industrial revolution, the lenses and the frames were mass-produced, effectively helping many people with vision impairments.
Initially, these glasses were made with wooden frame. It was replaced by strong plastics thereby changing the style of the eyeglasses drastically.
Sunglasses, as we see now, started appearing in the 20th Century. Till that time, sunglasses were not meant for protection against harmful rays. In 1929, Sam Foster, founder of Foster Grant, started mass production of sunglasses and it started gaining traction.
In 1936, Polaroid lens filter (which filters harmful rays such as UV rays before reaching our eyes) was invented by Edwin H. Land, co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. The same year, aviator sunglasses were built by Ray Ban using the Polaroid lens for the World War II American soldiers.
With time, successful ad campaigns and Hollywood stars’ adaption, they became a fashion statement.
