THE HISTORY OF SPECTACLES

The human face supplies us with enormous quantity of information and no other
sense organ is more susceptible to disorders than the eye. Roughly 70% of
Europeans have visual defects.
Just think of all the things we wouldn´t be able to do if we didn´t have access to
vision aids.
Since the Middle Ages, human knowledge has increased exponentially. It was
during the Renaissance that both intellectual and technical developments surge
ahead.
How was this possible? One thing is certain, it was not only a handful of geniuses
who began this initial development towards the information society we live in today.
Rather the revolution came about due to the fact that increasing numbers of people
could play an active part of the development. Two great milestones need to be
mentioned in this context, firstly the invention of printing and also the invention of
vision aids, or spectacles. Other inventions of the time were the microscope,
telescope, and the camera.
How far can the development be traced back? In the ancient high cultures as far
back as the Romans there were no spectacles. Marcos Tullius Cicero wrote to his
friend Atticus-Cicero, one of Rome´s great writers and statesmen (He died in
BC43), saying that now he was old he had to have slaves read aloud to him as he
could no longer read himself. Plinius reported that Nero watched the gladiator
battles through an emerald. However, this was probably more for pleasant effect of
looking through a color filter than to correct his vision. If we go back further to the
ancient Chinese culture we read of glass that was used in the form of spectacles;
the Chinese believed, however, that the poorly sighted were helped by the
imaginary powers of “Yoh Shui”
So when did the first glasses appear as vision aids?
Drawings and paintings from the early cultures are great help here. Many painters
from 15th century depicted biblical figures in religious paintings wearing spectacles.
They showed life as it was in their own time and various objects providing useful
historical clues for us today.
We are therefore not completely sure whether the religious teacher Sofronius
Eusebius Hieronymus, who lived from 340 to 420 AD, was really the inventor of
spectacles. On numerous pictures he is always portrayed with a lion, a skull and a
pair of glasses. Because of this he is the patron saint of spectacle markers.

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