Eyeglasses
Anteojos (gafas de lectura)
- Date
- c. 1286 · confidence high
- Place
- Pisa / Venice, Italy
- Credited to
- Anonymous Tuscan (sermon of Giordano da Pisa, 1306)
- Field
- Communication
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Two convex glass lenses set in riveted rims, correcting presbyopia. They doubled the useful working life of copyists, tailors and craftsmen.
Attributions to Salvino degli Armati or Alessandro della Spina are legendary; a 1306 sermon states they were invented 'less than twenty years ago'.
What it led to
- an extension of the productive life of scholars and precision craftsmen
- the optical glass industry of Venice (Murano) and Nuremberg
- the path towards concave lenses (15th century), the telescope and the microscope
Built on
- Convex lens / reading stonec. 1021
- Visby lenses (ground rock crystal)siglos XI-XII
- Stained glass windowc. 1100
- Convex lens / reading stone
- reading stones
- Venetian crystal glass
Made possible
- Concave spectacles for myopiac. 1450
- Refracting telescope1608
- Bifocal lensc. 1784
- First glass contact lens (Fick)1887-1888
- microscope
- concave lenses for myopia