when were eyeglasses invented?

Answer 1

The first recorded use of a corrective lens was by the emperor Nero, who was known to watch the gladiatorial games using an emerald. Glasses first began to appear in common use in northern Italy late in the 13th century; most likely in the late 1280s.

Answer 2

First Eyeglasses Invented

Answer 3

Most historians believe monks or craftsmen in Pisa (or perhaps Venice), Italy produced the first form of eyeglasses around 1285-1289. 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 first specific mention of eyeglasses is in a 1289 Italian manuscript 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."

Answer 4

The actual use of eyeglasses goes back to the 1600s. Benjamin Franklin didn't invent eyeglasses, he invented bifocals. Spectacles had been in use for over 100 years when Franklin got hold of them. Really early eyeglasses were not worn but rather held in front of the eyes, rather like a double monocle.

Answer 5

The truth is that nobody knows who invented eyeglasses. At some point in Italy between 1268 and 1289 someone came up with the idea, but the actual inventor remains anonymous. What we do know is that the earliest lenses were made from quartz and were usually set into bone, metal, or leather. As soon as early opticians figured out how to make glass without bubbles and other obstructions, they started making lenses out of glass.

Although glasses spread quickly throughout Europe and Asia, there was one major problem: keeping them on the wearer's face. Early glasses acted a bit like scissors, pinched onto the bridge of the nose. Ouch. It took nearly four hundred years before opticians figured out that rigid sidepieces resting on top of the ears might do the trick.

No history of spectacles would be complete without some mention of Benjamin Franklin, who invented bifocals in the 1780s. Annoyed at having to constantly switch glasses whenever he wanted to read or take in the sights while traveling, Franklin had his reading glasses cut in half and fused with his distance glasses. Now that's American ingenuity for you.

Answer 6

around 1268 - 1289

Historians are not certain who invented the first spectacles. In the late thirteen century around 1287 paintings first appeared with people wearing or holding spectacles. From these paintings we know that spectacles were invented in Italy.

Around 1300 the Venetian Glassmaker's Guild made regulations on glasses. They made it illegal for glasses to be made with glass lenses in place of the more valuable rock crystal.

In 1352 eyeglasses were only worn by the well educated, very rich noblemen or well read Italian clergy. At this time a monk named Tommaso da Modena documented the church had painted a fresco with an older churchman wearing glasses while looking over an old manuscript.

In 1456 Gutenberg invented the printing press. This created a widespread of books. Once people owned books reading glasses began to be seen in the hands of the common people. These glasses were made with a variety of materials including wood, lead, copper, bone, leather, and even horn.

In 1623 the Spanish invented the first graded lenses. This improved the trial and error method of trying on different lenses until one pair helped the wearer to see better.

Answer 7

well here are some facts:
-- It's been reported that Seneca - the Roman statesman, dramatist, and philosopher (4 BC-65 AD) - used a glass globe filled with water as a magnifier to read "all the books of Rome."
-- the emperor Nero reportedly used emeralds over his eyes to watch gladiator games, the emeralds acting as a form of sunglasses
-- mid-13th century, English philosopher and scientist Roger Bacon reported on the use of reading lenses
-- Italy produced the first form of eyeglasses around 1285-1289
-- The first specific mention of eyeglasses is in a 1289 Italian manuscript written by a member of the di Popozo family
-- Italian scholar Carlo Dati (1619-76) reported many years later that he read an entry pertaining to the invention of eyeglasses in a Latin Chronicle written in 1313 in a monastery in Pisa :
"Among the entries in this Chronicle, under the year 1313, it is recorded that in this monastery of St. Catherine there lived and died Friar Alessandro Spina, a monk of most excellent character and most acute mind, who understood everything that he heard said or saw done. And when it happened that somebody else was the first to invent eyeglasses and was unwilling to communicate the invention to others, all by himself he made them and good-naturedly shared them with everybody."

Answer 8

****Eye Glasses were invented in Italy around 1284.
Around 1000AD, the first vision aid was invented (inventor unknown) called a reading stone, which was a glass sphere that was laid on top of the material to be read that to magnified the letters.
Around 1284 in Italy, Salvino D'Armate is credited with inventing the first wearable eye glasses.


****Sunglasses
Around the year 1752, eyeglass designer James Ayscough introduced his spectacles with double-hinged side pieces. The lenses were made of tinted glass as well as clear. Ayscough felt that white glass created an offensive glaring light, that was bad to the eyes.
He advised the use of green and blue glasses. Ayscough glasses were the first sunglass like eyeglasses, but they were not made to shield the eyes from the sun, they corrected for vision problems.

Answer 9

In AD 04, the Roman historian Seneca used a curved lens to improve his vision. Nero is said to have peered through a gem stone in order to watch the goings on in the arena. Benjamin Franklin invented the bi-focal lens, but simple corrective lens eyeglasses were worn long before that.
The Chinese also used a lens, hundreds of years before the Europeans did, and the ancient Egyptians knew of glass and used reflecting globes. It is quite possible they also had some form of lens that could improve distance vision.
I guess the answer has to be that no one really knows, but they aren't a modern invention!

Answer 10

Glasses were invented in northern Italy, most likely in the late 1280s. The identity of the original inventor is unknown. In 1676, Franciscus Redi, a professor of medicine at the University of Pisa, wrote that he possessed a 1289 manuscript whose author complains that he would be unable to read or write were it not for the recent invention of glasses, and a record of a sermon given in 1305, in which the speaker, a Dominican monk named Fra Giordano da Rivalto, remarked that glasses had been invented less than twenty years previously, and that he had met the inventor.

Based on this evidence, Redi credited another Dominican monk, Fra Alessandro da Spina of Pisa, with the re-invention of glasses after their original inventor kept them a secret, a claim contained in da Spina's obituary record. In 1738, a Florentine historian named Domenico Manni reported that a tombstone in Florence credited one Salvino d'Armato (died 1317) with the invention of glasses. Other stories, possibly legendary, credit Roger Bacon with the invention. Bacon's published writings describe the magnifying glass (which he did not invent), but make no mention of glasses.

The first device of this kind was probably invented by Roger Bacon in the 13th cent. although similar devices are believed to have existed in ancient times in China and in the Mediterranean civilizations.

Early forms were crude and clumsy and were not improved until the 18th cent. when the grinding of lenses was first based upon the principles of light refraction.

Bifocal lenses, with a lower part for viewing objects near at hand (as in reading), were first devised by Benjamin Franklin.

Answer 11

When Were Glasses Invented