09/04/2019
Thank goodness for glasses, contact lenses, and corrective eye surgery! It's harder to navigate the world with poor vision and now we have more options than ever.
The earliest found records of a visual aid were called "reading stones", simple convex lenses that generally magnified images. Arabian scientist Alzhaen had described the effects around year 1000, the "Father of Modern Optics". It wasn't until 286 years later that someone adapted these stones into glasses in Pisa, Italy! The city of Florence then successfully innovated, produced, and sold glasses which eventually spread around Europe.
Glasses didn't arrive until the year 1775 to America, when John McAllister Sr. imported, sold and eventually started to self-make the reading device. He and his son were also the first to import astigmatic glasses in 1828. With this contribution and opening the first optical shop, John McAllister Sr. became the first important figure in American optometry. Finally, eye surgery procedures did not exist until the 1970's. Keratotomy was thought of by the Japanese in 1970, to correct near-sightedness. Americans were the first to carry out LASIK surgery, using laser to reshape the cornea to correct myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism in 1978.
In perspective, society has been around for about twenty thousand years. Glasses weren't created until about seven hundred years ago. Before that time, nearsighted youth endured a world that was clear only to within four to five feet from where they stood. Farsightedness and presbyopia (typically brought by the aging process after the age of 40) affected almost everyone. Active, productive members of society had to stop working, writing, reading, and using their hands for skillful tasks at a relatively young age.
Before the invention of spectacles to improve vision, society’s progress in culture, crafts, art, commerce, and science, was severely limited.
Comic and permission by IG
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