Eyeware

I have made it almost a personal crusade to find out what I could about eyeware in the Elizabethan era.  The may reason for this is I want to create period glasses so my bifocals don't look so funny.  Below is some of the information I have gathered regarding eyeware through the years.  I last updated this page on 10/26/00.  I have arranged the items in a timeline format.

Pythagoras, 6^th century BC therorized "that a set of rays emerged from the eye and struck objects so that information was passed back by the lens to the brain."¹¹

Aristotle, 4^th century BC stated, "If this were true, vision should be as good at night as in the day. Furthermore, the lens of the eye did not exist until a coagulation formed after death."¹¹

Alhazen, Arabian scientist, 11^th century wrote "the ides of external objects are conveyed by the optic nerves to the brain."¹¹

The Chinese had magnifying glasses of rock crystal and dark glasses of smoky quartz by the 12^th century.¹¹

Sculpture by Nicola Pisano (1225-1280) on the marble pulpit of the baptistry at Pisa.¹¹

Friar Roger Bacon wrote Opus Majus (1268), including description of using lenses to make letters bigger.¹¹

Vitello, a Polish scientist of the 13^th century, wrote "The convex surface brings the rays [of light] together and the concave produces divergence."¹¹

He also wrote Treatise on Optics (1270).¹¹

Sandra di Popozo (1289) in Traite de conduite de la famille wrote "I am so debilitated by age that without the glasses known as spectacles, I would no longer be able to read or write. These have recently been invented for the benefit of poor old people whose sight has become weak."¹¹

John Peckham wrote Prospectiva Communis, which summarized contemporary optical knowledge.¹¹

Da Vinci discovered that the retina was the essential organ of vision and left drawings of proposed lens-grinding machines.¹¹

A tombstone reads "Here lies Salvino d'Armato of the Armati of Florence. Inventor of spetacles. God pardon him his sins, A.D. 1317."¹¹

Oldest painting showing spectacles is by Tommaso da Modena in 1352.  It is called "Portrait of Hugh of Provence."^{11, 12}

Chaucer's "The Wife's Tale" (1386) contains the lines:

"Povert a spectakel is, as thinkith me
Thurgh which he may his verray frendes se."¹¹

In 1420, lenses were made of beryl or crystal.¹³

A helmet was made in 1495 for Henry VIII with lenses riveted into the eyeholes.¹³

Lead glass (or flint glass) was discovered by Ravenscroft in England in 1560.  The clarity of the glass was identical to the mined crystals used previously for optical purposes.¹²

A 1581 Spanish portrait by Rowyer shows a Paduan professor wearing spectacles held in place by cord running back over the ears.¹³

The year 1600 saw the use of Regensburg frames with spring bridges and strap spectacles similar in appearance and use to modern leather goggles, like in the pilots wore in the old airplane movies.¹³

Johannes Kepler, a German astronomer, defined myopia (nearsightedness) in 1604.¹¹

Sirturus of Milan wrote a textbook on optics in 1618.¹²