The History of Optic Aids

Marcle Proust once said that "[t]he voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes, but in having new eyes. For the billions of eyes that exist in the world, we know the vision is limited by psychological and physiological reasons. Protecting eyes involves a billion dollar industry, but seeing farther can add to more than just seeing flowers, but discovering new worlds.

First Came the Magnifying Glass

Apparently no visual instruments existed at the time of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, or Romans. But in defiance of poor eye sight, it was rumored that The Roman tragedian Seneca, born in about 4 B.C read "all the books in Rome" by peering at them through a glass globe of water to produce magnification. It is said that Nero used an emerald held up to his eye while he watched gladiators fight. And, Ptolemy discusses the general principle of magnification in his works.

Somewhere around1000 A. D., a reading stone was developed. This was the forerunner of the magnifying glass. Using a segment of spherical glass, the optic aid helped enlarge letters and helped with reading. Over time, the reading stones became widely used. Presbyopic monks used them as reading aids, and Venetians mastered the production of them.

Spectacles

More than 2000 years ago, the Chinese developed an eye protector to help ward off evil spirits. These protectors were in the form of eye glasses, but not used for vision correction. In the year 1268, Roger Bacon, an English philosopher, wrote in his Opus Majus about the benefit of crystal and glasses for improving vision in "weak eyes." Some twenty years later, Frenchman Sandra di Popozo specifically called eye glasses, spectacles, for use for reading and writing. The first eye glasses are believed to have been made between the times of Bacon and di Popozo. The name of the actual inventor of eyeglasses is lost in obscurity.

Use of concave lensed spectacles became popular over time. The first spectacles used quartz lenses set in anything from bone to leather. And, they basically consisted of two magnifying glasses. The use of spectacles spread from throughout Europe, and as early as 1629, eyeglass makers were marketing their wares as aids for the aged.

glasses were helpful, the earlier sets were not functional, because a way of attaching them to the face had not been envisioned. By 1730, Edward Scarlett, a British optician, had a brainstorm and made rigid arms that helped rest glasses over the ears. The trend spread like wildfire.

Variations of eyeglass, included monocles and binoculars. Then, in the Americas, Benjamin Franklin created a new innovation called bifocals. In the 1780s, Franklin cut his reading and seeing glasses in half and set them in the same circular part of his eyeglass frames.

Still as more time progressed, innovations such as tinted lenses came about. Bifocals kead te way to trifocals. And, quartz was replaced by glass lenses. The science of eyeglass making and fitting grew.

Contact Lenses

As the science of eye glasses and lenses evolved, the idea of using other vision correction options also evolved. In 1845, Englishman Sir John Herschel, the son of famous astronomer Fredrich Wilhelm Herschel, suggested the idea of contact lenses. Nearly forty years later, German glass eye maker made the contact lenses a reality- blowing a bit of protective glass to place over a man's eyeball. A few years later, Dr. A. Eugene Fick, a Swiss physician, and August Muller, a German medical student, discussed their work with contact lenses. The development of these alternatives to eye glasses progressed more quickly than innovations of eyeglasses. By the 1940s, a variety of glass contact lenses were available. Today, plastic and disposable lenses are available.

Telescope & Microscope

While optic aids are generally considered for regular use, scientists also use optical aids in evaluating the universe. Think of telescopes and microscopes. They are the more educated and specialized cousins of binoculars, eyeglasses, contact lenses and magnifying glasses.

The Telescope

Telescopes were probably developed in the late 1500s. In their early papers, Englishmen John Dee and Thomas Digges, mathematicians and astronomers, describe the use of reflecting and refracting lens telescopes. In 1608, an eyeglass maker designed the first working telescopes. It was these refracting devices that Galileo used.

Many of the great names in science had their hands in the further development of telescopes. While the inventor of the first telescope is unclear, it is documented that Hans Lippershey is the first person to have applied for a patent for the telescope. In the early 1600s, Lippershey's telescope designs were clearly very functional. And, it was Johannes Kepler, one of the father's of celestial mechanics, who divined that convex lenses could be used for telescopes. Following Kepler's guidance, four decades later, Christiaan Huygens built a more powerful telescope and was able to discover Saturn's moons in 1655. By 1668, Sir Isaac Newton built the first reflecting telescope.

The powerful of telescopes changed over time due to new technologies and understanding of lenses. Achromatic lenses reduced color aberrations and radio telescopes were built around the turn of the 20^th century.

The Microscope

The Rennaissance lead to free thought and numerous discoveries. While men were explorer the visible world, others were attempting to explore the unseen. The microscope was invented during this time.

About 1590, two Dutch eyeglass makers, Zaccharias Janssen and his son Hans, while experimenting with several lenses in a tube, discovered that nearby objects appeared greatly enlarged.

Decades later, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, while apprenticing, discovered magnifying glasses. Using these, he began experimenting with grinding and polishing smaller lenses. Somewhere around mid 1600s, he built a light microscope and was able to identify bacteria, yeast plans, and other microscopic organisms.

Other scientists, such as Englishman Robert Hooke, made improvements on microscopesl. As models improved, magnification levels and light filtering became more efficient.

The electron microscope became a reality in the 1930s as a replacement to the limited power of the light microscope. Invented by Germans Max Knoll and Ernst Ruska in 1931, the electron microscope uses electrons speed up in a vacuum that works to make images on electron sensitive photographic plates.

Seeing is one of the five senses, but seeing better is part a desire to defy weakness and to explore the world. Optic aids have been around for centuries. Magnifying glasses and the Hubble Telescope are optical cousins! The use and development of optic aids have progressed as the needs of scientists and people progressed. It's certain that in order for humans to see better, in the real, microscopic or telescopic worlds, there will always need for some form of optical aids.

For more information on optic aids and their history, check out these websites and resources:

http://www.teagleoptometry.com/history.htm

http://www.eyetopics.com/articles/41/1/The-History-of-Eyeglasses.html

http://inventors.about.com/od/gstartinventions/a/glass_3.htm

http://www.antiquespectacles.com/history/ages/through_the_ages.htm

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_huygens.htm