Renoir, Pierre Auguste (1841-1919): La Loge (Theatre box),
1874 oil on canvas, 80 x 63.5 cm, P.1948.SC.338, The Samuel Courtauld Trust,
Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, London (note several opera glasses) |
The Usurers, Marinus Van Roymerswaele (1490 - 1567), oil on
panel, inv. n. 4080, Stibbert Museum, Florence, Italy |
Jacque Callot (Nancy, 1592-Nancy, 1635), St. Simon, from the series:
Apostles, etching, VZ XIV, 78 Zagreb Archives, Croatia |
The Death of Mary, painted on panel c. 1418,
Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum Hannover |
Portrait of a man, possibly a Botanist, 1641. Metropolitan
Museum of Art. Click on the image to learn more about this wonderful
painting. |
| 1284 |
The earliest statutes of the Italian crystal workers is
written "Capitulare de Crisstellaris" |
| Circa
1286 |
The first eyeglasses are made by a lay person in Pisa, Italy |
| 1300 |
A term for eyeglasses is used for the first time |
| 1300 |
Crystal workers were forbidden to use ordinary white glass
instead of crystal glass |
| 1319 |
Regulations are developed to protect the glass making trade, requiring standards for materials and craftsmanship
|
| 1352 |
A painting by Tommaso da Modina shows Cardinal Hugh
of Provence
wearing rivet spectacles |
| 1475
|
The first illustration of spectacles in a printed work |
| 1535
|
The Nuremburg, Germany spectacles maker’s guild is formed |
| 1629
|
The Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers is incorporated
in England |
| Circa 1714 - 1727 |
London optician Edward Scarlett (Sr.)
is credited with developing side arms
for spectacles (he is the first to advertise them) |
| 1752 |
James Ayescough invents
the double-hinged temple |
| 1756 |
Benjamin Martin devises Visual
Glasses with a horn annulus to reduce the amount of light entering the
eyes |
| Circa
1760 |
Benjamin Franklin conceives of the idea of the split lens bifocal |
| 1783 |
Addison Smith is awarded the first spectacles patent for
double spectacles which rotated down |
| 1797 |
John Richardson invents four-lens spectacles which rotate in
from the sides |
| 1797 |
Dudley Adams patents a device with adjustable drop-down
lenses for the variation in interpupillary distance. |
| 1806
|
John McAllister, Sr. makes round Franklin bifocals for President
Thomas Jefferson who designed them |
| 1825 |
Robert Bate patents the innovation to add spring mechanisms
to the lorgnette |
| 1825 |
George Airy corrects his own astigmatism with a pair of
sphero-cylindrical lenses |
| 1827 |
John Issac Hawkins
devises and patents the trifocal in London |
| 1828 |
The McAllisters begin
importing astigmatic (cylindrical) lenses |
| 1833 |
American Optical has its earliest beginnings when William
Beecher makes coin silver spectacles in Southbridge, Ma. |
| 1843 |
Beecher makes the first elastic steel wire glasses in America |
| 1883
|
American Optical produces the first ophthalmic lenses in the
United States |
| 1887 |
Swiss ophthalmologist Dr.Adolph
Eugen Fick conceives molded corneal contact lenses |
| 1887 |
German artificial eye maker Frederick Muller fits a thin
glass contact scleral
shell to a patient who was missing a lower lid |
| 1888 |
August Morck Jr. patents a bifocal cemented on the outside
of the original lens |
| 1894
|
The first formal school for refracting is organized in
Boston - The Klein School of Optics, which later became the New England
College of Optometry |
