The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1890-10-31

| Is, one with conczve Iens Inese are the
two chief and important glasses, and they
are numbered according to their range in
power. Besides these are other forms of
lenses, which are intended to supply pecu
liar defects, buS it would require much
technical description to make you under
stand them. You can see what they look
like in any work on optics"
who invented spectscles, doctor. or
how did the idea originator
Don't know; nobody knows" was the
sententious reply There were hints of
optical instruments among the Baby
lonians. Burning glasses were used 400
years before the Christian era. and it IS ?
matter of history that Nero had defective
vision andlocked through glass in watch
ing the gladiatorial games. He wore a
polished stone in a finger ring, and it il
not certain whether this stone was used
as mirror or lens. Genuine spectacles
did not appear until more than twelve
hundred years afterward, and like many
important articles they came to the surface
in different places England and Italy
both claim them.
Roger Bacon Is said to have invented
them in 1886, yet on Florentine tomb in
Italy, bearing date 1890, is this inscription:
Here lies Salvino degli Armati, inventor
of spectacles May God pardon his sins"
In the Fourteenth century spectacles were
frequently used, but only by the very
wealthy, and being highly priced, were
bequeathed with elaborate care In 1906
they were made in Holland and Germany,
and later appeared in Spain, but instead Of
being worn to aid defective vision were
there used as matter of fashion. This
habit rapidly spread to the rest of the con-
tinent and brought about the transforma-
ton from the old Thirteenth century spec
tacles into eyeglasses, and eventually into
the monocle"
''In pictures of the celebrities of the last
century notice that many of them wore
glasses" said the writer
Eyes, nearly all the great writers of that
day used spectacles as they grew old, but
you must have observed that the lenses
were very larSe and the frames massive.
Oliver Goldsmith had pair of this kind,
and half the time he was so absent minded
that he would hunt the house over only to
find them on the top of his head He was
lazy, focused to go to bed in his dressing
gown, aud when he got tired of reading
would turn his spectacles back over his
nightcap and throw his shoe at the candle
to put out the light.
''By the way, a valuable invention was
made by Ben Franklin. It was a glass
bisected horizontally. for use in special
cases in which there was both far and near
vision. Probably he was himself affected
in this way. He called them his comfort
glasses and the name has come down to
the present time, many of our old people
still clinging to the big round tortoise
shell frames that were the fashion in the
early part of the century. Glasses were
first made on scientific principles-that is
to say, with reference to their focal power
under the direction of Felix Fontana,
celebrated Italian philosopher and mathe-
matician, who is buried by the side of
Calico, in Florence, and modern opticians
have more or less followed his principles"
where do the best glasses come fromt"
Commercially speaking, they are made
in Paris, although we are beginning to ex-
eel in America. Many glasses are also
made in Germany, where the government
at one time paid a subsidy for their manu-