A brief history of eyeglasses from 1000 C.E. through the Middle Ages and to the Present. At about the turn of the first millenium, a Muslim scientist referred to in Latin as Alhazen, wrote a treatise titled The Book of Optics which became a foundational text in the study of, among several things, optics and experimental physics. He is thought to be the first person to have written about the use of a magnifying tool for improving vision through the convex shaping of glass. The use of glass or crystals to improve clarity of vision existed in various rudimentary forms from earlier points in history but was only documented and described in a more technical manner in the early part of the 11th century.

By the end of the 13th century this early evidence of corrective glass called a reading stone (often held at a distance from the eye, for example pressed directly against text to be enlarged) gave way to the first spectacles to be used on the face. These first quartz crystal lenses would be set in frames linked by a bridge to hold on the nose but did not have framing to hold the spectacles to the face so that ribbon or some other make-shift device would be devised to keep them in place.

It was not until the 1700’s that hinged side-bars were attached to the glass frames in order to secure them and it was also towards the end of this century that variations in lens appeared in the form of monocles (a single lens) and lorgnettes (two lenses held up with a handle at the side.) The bifocal, invented by Benjamin Franklin, also emerged in the late 1700’s. By this time, glasses as a necessity as well as a distinguishing mark for the wearer, were indicative of innovation and learning. Typically, glasses were more accessible to the upper classes because of expense but as they became more widely produced they also became more accessible. Nevertheless as features of style, beyond their practical purpose, glasses remain accessories and the variations one can find in eyeglasses and sunglasses today, demonstrate this clearly in the history of fashion.

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