Sight for Sore Eyes
Summer
sun makes the beach flash like silver. Winter snow sparkles
whiter than white. All you know is that your eyes ache and
your head hurts. Reach in your pocket and pull out . . .
sunglasses!
These days, sunglasses are everywhere. But who thought
up these wonders for your eyes? For hundreds of years, people
believed that certain colors soothed and shaded the eyes.
The Roman emperor Nero peered through a light green emerald
to watch the gladiators battling in the Coliseum.
In
twelfth-century China, judges hid their eyes behind glasses
of smoky quartz. Through the brown crystal, no one could
guess what the judges were thinking.
Spectacles
with colored glass were popular in the 1600s. Writers and
others who worked long hours reading in poor light hoped
that green spectacles would help their tired eyes.
In
the early 1800s, “gogglers” protected travelers’
eyes from wind, dust, and strong reflected light. Gogglers
were framed black cups containing plain or colored glass,
tied onto the head with a ribbon.
With
the invention of the airplane in the early 1900s, glare—light
that bounces off objects and creates a shine—became
a problem for pilots. In the 1920s, the American Army Air
Corps asked the company Bausch and Lomb for help. What was
their solution? Green Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses!
Right
before World War II, a craze for tinted sunglasses swept
Europe. In America, Hollywood movie stars quickly followed
the trend. At first the stars wore sunglasses for protection
from the sun. But they soon realized the glasses gave them
a mysterious look. It didn’t take long for sunglasses
to become the hot new fashion.
By
1965, photochromic lenses appeared, which turn from a light
color indoors to a dark color in sunlight. In the 1960s
and 1970s, sunglasses took on wild shapes and colors—enormous
stars, granny glasses, mirrors, and wraparound strips. The
1980s brought us improved lenses that protected the eyes
from harmful rays of the sun.
What’s
new for the 1990s? How about battery-operated electromagnetic
sunglasses? Flip a switch, and a tiny electric current adjusts
the darkness of the lens in seconds. Maybe “liquid
sunglasses” sound better. A squirt of these drops in
each eye screens out harmful solar rays for hours.
There are so many possibilities! What do you want your sunglasses to do?
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The
first eyeglasses were hooked together by a nosepiece
and pinched onto the nose. Coats of arms, elephants,
and other carvings decorated some fancy nosepieces.
Some glasses were tied onto the head with ribbon
or strips of leather. Others were hooked to the
ears by loops of cord.
