How bone plates turned into modern glasses and where are the Catholics

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Glasses have come a long way before getting their modern look. The first devices for improving human vision - bone plates with narrow slits or a curved piece of rock crystal - and glasses, you can't call it, but still they became a good help for a person of the past, allowing you to see more and more clearly. And the glasses themselves owe their birth primarily to the Catholic Church.

Glasses and lenses BC

When glasses were invented, they argued back in the 17th century. According to one point of view, something similar was used in antiquity. And according to another version, the first such devices appeared at the end of the Middle Ages. In fact, there have been ways to improve vision or protect your eyes from the bright sun since before our era. It is difficult to call those products glasses, except perhaps in quotation marks, and yet the principle of their use was not particularly different from what is practiced in modern times.

First of all, it is necessary to distinguish between the history of sunglasses and prescription lenses designed to compensate for the lack of visual acuity. To cope with the blinding light of the sun's rays reflected from the snow, the peoples of the North, Asia and America made special plates in which they made narrow slits - so the effect of the sun on the eyes was significantly reduced. These "glasses" were made from the bones of animals, including mammoths, and also from pieces of tree bark. cases, officials thus hid their eyes from other participants in the process.

And they knew about the property of certain transparent materials "to help vision" even in antiquity, in any case, Ptolemy wrote about such "lenses"; and the Roman emperor Nero used a specially processed emerald, watching the gladiatorial competitions. But the glasses themselves and even their predecessors appeared in Europe much later.

Reading stones and other optical devices

Medieval monks used the properties of lenses to read manuscripts - for this they used "stones", processed in a special way. Rhinestone, beryl or glass were used as materials for making stones for reading. It was already at the end of the first millennium of the new era. The medieval philosopher Roger Bacon wrote about hemispherical lenses in the 13th century. For a long time, there were no devices for correcting myopia, and all inventions were focused on the farsighted. Another feature was that the "telescopic lenses" were used for only one eye.

And the first glasses, that is, two lenses fixed on the base-frame, were designed at the end of the 13th century in Italy. The authorship is not documented in any way, but it is believed that the inventor was a certain Alessandro Spina, a monk from Pisa. It is known for certain that by the middle of the XIV century, glasses were already in full use by those who sought to see more clearly, and that this little thing was then a new thing and met with recognition. The Italians even began to produce them for export - in large quantities. This is how the first glasses got to China - just then they were improved for court officials.

The fashion for glasses spread rapidly throughout Europe, at first mainly in monasteries. And the first specialized glasses store was opened in Strasbourg, on the territory of the Holy Roman Empire, in 1466. It is known that Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich used glasses in silver frames with diopters. The bows did not exist at that time - they were invented at the beginning of the 18th century by the English optician Edward Scarlett.

Before the campaign in Egypt, Napoleon Bonaparte ordered the production of a large batch of glasses for his army - glasses that protect the eyes. The southern sun was detrimental to the eyes of Europeans, who were not used to bright light. The decision was fully justified, those who avoided the order to wear glasses, later suffered from eye diseases, often irreversible, up to cataracts.

Monocles, lorgnets and other "grandfathers" of modern glasses

If now glasses are used to correct vision, then in the relatively recent past the list of optical devices in the service of a person was somewhat wider. Monocles, pince-nez and lorgnets remained popular until the 20th century; they can be seen not only in paintings, but also in photographs, and even on film.

Monocles have been used since the 14th century, for some time the lens was fixed on a long wooden handle and thus brought to the eye. Another, later, method of using the monocle, already without a hand, was to clamp it with the muscles of the face, a chain was attached to the monocle, which, attached to the lapel of a jacket or other clothing, did not allow the lens to get lost.

The use of a monocle gave its owner a rather characteristic look, which is why it became a symbol of aristocracy and even snobbery. Monocles have become especially fashionable since the second half of the 19th century, mainly in Germany, but this fashion faded away with the outbreak of the First World War: the world began to avoid unpleasant associations.

Another famous accessory is the pince-nez, named after the French pince-nez - "pinching my nose." The pince-nez was deprived of the now familiar earhooks, it was attached directly to the nose - hence the name. In order not to injure the skin, the clamp was wrapped in a soft material. Since the 19th century, the production and sale of pince-nez experienced a real boom, customers were offered a variety of frames and pince-nez models.

But if pince-nez was considered a rather democratic accessory, then lorgnette was associated primarily with aristocrats. There was even the term "lornirovanie" - that is, a direct look at the interlocutor through the lorgnette - of course, in the setting of salons or theaters. In general, the function of this device was similar to that performed by theater binoculars. The frame, into which the lenses were inserted, was fixed on a long handle, and the lorgnette was applied to the face.

Quite often, precious materials were used for its manufacture and decoration - both noble metals and expensive stones. The twentieth century became a period of gradual oblivion for lorgnets; by the beginning of World War II, they were no longer made.

Eyesight products contained lenses that either helped to read or increased the clarity of objects at a distance. But Benjamin Franklin was the author of the invention of such glasses, which made it possible to see both near and far. The President of the United States told a friend in a letter that he took one pair of glasses for the nearsighted, one for the farsighted, pulled out the lenses and cut them in half. Then he inserted into the frame from above - those that were "seen" at a distance, and from below - those that are for reading. The result is bifocal lenses. It happened in 1784.

Benjamin Franklin is one of those who linked a clear head and increased intelligence with vegetarianism.