Скачать или смотреть How spectacles were invented 👓

Spectacles may look like a simple piece of glass today, but their origin goes back nearly a thousand years. Early references appear in 11th century Egypt and among Arab scholars who used convex lenses to magnify text, though these were not wearable frames but flat glass placed on manuscripts. By the 13th century in Italy, monks struggling with fading eyesight began experimenting with convex glass. One monk secretly crafted the first frame-mounted lenses before his death, but it was Alessandro della Spina who observed these experiments and popularized spectacles for the world. These early glasses balanced only on the nose, yet they revived something priceless - the ability to keep reading and learning.

From Venice’s master glassmakers producing optically pure lenses, to France adding temples in the 18th century, and finally the 19th century invention of concave lenses for distance vision, spectacles evolved alongside human knowledge itself. Today, blue-light filters and photochromatic glasses feel futuristic, but at the core, spectacles began with one humble mission: to ensure that age or blurred vision could never interrupt humanity’s pursuit of wisdom.

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