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Four Eyes Good: The History of Glasses · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and Jerry's here too, and it's just the three of
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: us with three pairs of eyes. And that's all I did.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: We all wear glasses.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess all three of us do. Now, Huh
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: you didn't for a really long time. You were the
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: holdout who kept crashing your car.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I wore And I think I've told this story,
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: but I was sort of the typical story of always
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: had really great vision and then it's been more longer
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: than you think. Then sometime in my mid forties, I
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: was like, Huh, this thing I'm reading isn't so clear.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: And I went to the doctor and they're like, yeah, yeah,
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: you're reading. Vision is failing, so just get some glasses.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Did I ever tell you the story of when I
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: found out I needed glasses?
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Now? How old were you?
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: I was in fourth grade and we went in for
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: like a lyfe check and a like an eye exam
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: that just an eye test, just one of those things
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: where it's like, obviously the state requires this, so it
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: doesn't actually it's not actually a.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Thing scoliosis too while they're at it.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Probably, so I was like totally flabbergasted when they were like,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: you need glasses, Like I was just expecting not that
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: at all. Yeah, And sure enough, when I went in
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: for an eye exam, I was like, oh, I can
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: actually see things now. I hadn't really noticed. And so yeah,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: since fourth grade I had to wear glasses or contact lenses,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: and I'll never forget my first pair of glasses. I
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: think I was kind of bummed that I had to
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: wear glasses at all. So my mom made sure that
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: we went and got like the coolest glasses we could find,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: that's sweet, which were in Elton John Special. They were
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: totally clear, an electric blue wire going through the whole thing,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: and I would wear those today if I could find them.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: They were pretty awesome.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the time where we grew up glasses
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: was definitely like kind of super not cool, but then
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: I remember by the time we got to high school,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: it was I can't believe I'm admitting this. I'm actually
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: one of those people who bought the fake glasses and
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: were a little while Oh yeah, yeah, because it was
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: you know, international mail, the whole GQ thing. I thought
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: I was a preppy kid, and I thought they'd make
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: me look cooler and more preppy, and so I did
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: that tortoise shells yeah for a while. But yeah, glasses,
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: And as we'll see in this, in this great, great
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: article that Livia put together for us, that has long
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: been a push pull since kind of the beginning of
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: glasses was do they make it seem like you're deficient
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: as a person or do they make you look like smarter?
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, No, it's it's a tension that's as old
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: as glasses, basically. Yeah, And it's sad that it still
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: kind of goes on. But I think that's really kind
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: of gone the way of the dinosaur thanks to people
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: like you stepping up and wearing glasses when you didn't
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: need them, thanks to Huey Lewis stepping up and teaching
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: everyone it's hip to be square. I really think that
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: was probably the transition point right there.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I also want to point out I would
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: love to see pictures of you with those glasses, if
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: you have any, because to me, there's nothing cuter than
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: a kid wearing glasses. Well, I don't.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Know if I can, if I can put my finger
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: on any of those and even if I could, I'm
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: pretty sure the glasses were my best feature back then.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: So you talked about, you know, this tension from the
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: beginning of glasses. Let's talk about the beginning of glasses.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Because the concept of glasses as we understand them today,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: like these things that you wear that contain corrective lenses
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: that you can put on your on your face and
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: they typically won't fall off. That's only a few hundred
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: years old. But people have needed corrective lenses for long
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: before that. So there's a really great question that I've
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: always kind of wondered that I've never bothered to look up,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Like what about people who needed glasses before glasses were invented?
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah? So, uh again, Lyvia helped us with this, and
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: I think I'm going to use her title because it
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: was really another Lvia special.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: I didn't get it.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: Four eyes good. You didn't get it?
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: No, I still don't.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Well, four eyes means you wear glasses, right, and so
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: you know four eyes is good? Okay, So they're like
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: helps you see better.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: There's no there's no deeper meaning or pun or reference
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: to it.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Oh I don't think so, cause I mean.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Why why didn't she include r like, four eyes are good.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: I just took it. I may be wrong. We'll have
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: to ask Livia as just four eyes good, like TikTok would.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Say, yeah, okay, all right maybe, so yeah, we have
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: to ask Olivia.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: I may be staring at an obvious pun though that
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: I'm not overlooking so who knows.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Well, we're both overlooking it if we are.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: So let me put on my pun glasses.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: You need to break those things, all right.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: So anyway, I agree, you know, Olivia kind of points
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: out like as reading came along, people needed glasses more
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: and more because a lot of like myself, if I
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: never read anything, I would be just fine. Like I
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: might look at something close to me and be like,
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: well it might look a little fuzzy, but it's not
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: like reading something that's fuzzy. So for before reading became
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: a big, big thing, not as many people noticed, I think.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: And then I think people who had which is it
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: nearsighted or far sighted When you can't see something far away.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: You're nearsighted, like you're sighted to see things nearby.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Okay, So I think those people were just kind of
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: sol and just was like, oh, well, I guess just
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: one of the things that happens to people.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Yes, there is such a thing as hereditary myopia, where
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: you can be myopic because you were born that way.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: But the larger point here is that there were far,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: far fewer people who were myopic than there are today
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: because of the advent of reading. And there's studies that
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: show that the more students read, the more myopic they become.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: And it's just as sounding to me. I didn't ever
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: think of it that way, but it's totally true. From reading.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Glasses came as a necessity.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the people that may have been had you
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: not great close focus back in the day, may have
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: done things like engraving or these skills where they were
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: doing something kind of like reading, right right.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: So, and we've had lenses, just not corrective lenses for
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: a very long time. About almost five thousand years ago,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: people were grinding things like quartz into lenses, but they
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: were basically like little six year old kids. They would
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: use them to start fires with that's what their purpose was.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: And they were developed independently in different parts of the world,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: like Assyria and Greece had them about five thousand years ago,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: and about two thousand years ago they developed them in Peru,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: which is pretty cool too. But I mean, a good
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: idea is a good idea, and I think things like
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: that proved that.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, it was archimedes deathway was that a lens?
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: It was a mirror a right, Yeah, I thought of
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: that too.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, we did a great podcast on mirrors a long time,
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: you remember that one.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: That was a good one. My brain is still broken
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: from that. Like it was one of those things where
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: I just assumed it would be pretty easy, and it's
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: not at all easy. It's really hard to comprehend mirrors
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: and how they work.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, all right, So, yeah, they were polishing lenses
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: and I think the reading stone was the first kind
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: of use of a lens to help you read something.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: And those were the little round things that you would
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: sit literally sit on a book and push along rather
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: than hold it out like a magnifying glass. And there
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: was a lot of monk, a lot of monks doing
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: a lot of this because I think they were doing
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: more like text work than a lot of most people
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: back then.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because you didn't have a way to copy anything
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: except for by hand, so that was a huge role
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: of monks. So yeah, they definitely needed those and then
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: translating things into other languages. There's a really good example
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: of an important development in the field of like classes
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: or corrective lenses that happened because somebody translated the writing
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: of an Arab scholar named Abu Ali al Hassan Ibn
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: al Hatham, who was born in nine sixty five CE,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: and he actually figured out that we see because our
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: eyes sense beams of light, and in other parts of
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: the world, like for example, Greece, they thought it was
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: the opposite, that we shot laser beams out of our eyes.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: And I know we've talked about that before, Yeah, because
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: it's so preposterous that I just love it. But I
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: don't remember what episode, but but I a'l Hatham figured
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: this out. But he was writing in Arabic. Luckily, there
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: was a monk who was also a physicist, a Polish
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: monk named Vitelo, who in the twelve hundreds translated al
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Haitham from Arabic to Latin, which gave a chance for
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: another monk in English, monk named Roger Bacon, to read
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: it in Latin and then build on al Haatham's findings
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: about vision and optics.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Is it weird to me that I thought the monk
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: being named Roger Bacon was funny sounding.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: No it is. It's really funny. Oh okay, yeah, no
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: it's I mean, it's just such a modern name but
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: also a silly modern name. Yeah, yeah, okay, good, I'm
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: with you. No offense to Kevin, No, no, he knows.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if we're talking about glasses, like you know, the
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: glasses that we think of today, still not you know,
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: you'll note there's some key things missing here still. But
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: if we're talking about a convex lens to help someone
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: who is far sighted read text or a book, you
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: got to go to Italy in the late thirteenth century,
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Italy with a little bit of Germany mixed in here
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: and there. But it seems like Italy really drove the
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: glasses industry forward, using crown glass at the time, like
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: you know, real glass for their lenses. And we'll get
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: to that switch later on too. But they speculate that
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: you know, they were grinding me and you know, they
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: were making mirrors and polishing stones and stuff, so they
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: probably wasn't a big leap to start doing the same
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: kind of things with the same kind of tools to
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: make glass lenses.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so like you said there were convex lenses
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: to help magnify things for people who are far sighted,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: and that is far far easier to make than a
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: concave lens, as we'll see. So those convex lenses were
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: around for centuries before corrective lenses for people with myopia
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: came along.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And another thing I don't want to do, maybe
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: is if you're in a place to look things up
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: for image searches, these are all fun to look at,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: these antique glasses. If you look up Rivet spectacles Rivet,
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: these were sort of the first glasses that were held
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: together by a little you know, Rivet. It looks like
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: a hinge. I couldn't tell it. It looks like they
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: might move and like fold upon each other.
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: Is that true.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but it looked like that to me too,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: I would guess.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: So they're kind of cool looking. But one thing you
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: notice is that even with the Rivet spectacles, they're not
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: you don't hang that Rivet on your nose. It's still
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: just a hinge to hold them together.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you had to hold classes or spectacles with your
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: hand for centuries after they were invented. Basically. Yeah, And
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: like we said, with the advent of reading. Thanks to
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: things like the Gutenberg printing Press in the fourteen hundreds
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: or later in the sixteen hundreds, when Europe started to
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: publish newspapers all over the place, reading became much more widespread,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: and so the need four glasses became much more widespread
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: thanks to the development of myopia from reading and especially
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: reading by candle light.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that would really put a strain on
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: your eyes, right.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Totally for sure. And so this is also about the
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: time in medieval I think medieval Europe where the whole
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: thing kind of became like, all right, is this a
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: fashion statement? Are you showing everybody that you're correcting a disability?
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: What's the deal here with classes? This is around the
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: time where it really kind of started to take hold,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: and in fact, Olivia turned up something I thought was
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: pretty interesting. Depending on the painter and depending on how
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: you wanted to depict the person, especially during the Renaissance,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: you might show somebody who was born before glasses were
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: invented wearing glasses to get across how studious and scholarly
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: they were, or if you wanted to show how cool
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: somebody was if they were known to wear glasses you
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: might have you might leave the glasses out altogether.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's that that weird pushbull that we were
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: talking about. And I guess it just depended on maybe
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: just the time and place and what the culture was
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: like in that particular time and place, right right.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: They were also a way to depict wealth. Remember it
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: had a painting called the Parable of the Rich Fool,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: which is a Bible story. So of course it's took
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: place long before there was such a thing as glasses,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: but he included glasses on the Rich Fool to show
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: how rich he was.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and in China, because he's spread via the Silk
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: Road to Asia, some of their judiciary committees they were like,
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: here's your uniform, and part of it was glasses, whether
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: you needed them or not. Like you like me? That
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: nice work.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: You want to take a break, Yeah.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, since we literally just chinxed each other, I
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: think it should take break.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: That's right. You owe me a coke?
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: All right, be right back, so chuck before we.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Get started again. I want to say something every time
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: I say glasses, or hear glasses, or even read glasses
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: in my head, Velma goes my glasses. It's been happening constantly,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: and I think what's most significant about it is that
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: hasn't gotten old yet.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: So Velma from Scooby Doo would she lose her glasses?
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: She invariably said, my glasses, and I just got it
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: in my head.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: And you've been doing that like for two days.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, over and over and over and over. It's going
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: on right now as we speak. As a matter of fact.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: And by the sounds of it, you were also practicing
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: that Arabic name.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I actually did not out loud.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you busted that thing out, man.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: I just have a silver tongue for Arabic.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: Apparently that was really good.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Thanks. Okay, so let's get started. We talked about how
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: the lenses for far sightedness or around for centuries before nearsightedness,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: but we eventually got to those, I guess in like
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: the fifteenth century the fourteen hundreds, again not coincidentally with
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: the spread of reading, we finally figured out how to
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: make lenses that are concave that correct vision for people
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: who can see things nearby but not far away.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: That's right, and the other way around, like you mentioned
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: in Act one, a lot harder to do. There was
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: a cardinal named Nicholas of Kusa, And this is where
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: the Germany part comes in, because that's where Germany is now.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: He's given a lot of credit to developing the convex lens.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: But once again, it was really Italy where a lot
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: of this was taking place, specifically Florence, where they were
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: really crafting excellent lenses for the time. And I think
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: they were pretty darn good at it, even like compared
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: to today. I've read that it's like kind of remarkable
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: how good they were at this.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean I always equate venue
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: with glass because of Venetian glass, but sure, why not
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Florence too.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: So there are a couple of innovations that came along
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: in the seventeenth century to the sixteen hundreds that really
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: kind of helped push things forward. So we've been making
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: glass for centuries by then. But as they were trying
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: to figure out how to make these things refract light.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: That's how lenses correct. They refract light at different angles
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: depending on what you need to see in focus. They
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: figured out that not only you know, could you use
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: traditional glass and then shape it in certain ways, you
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: could add certain things to glass that would help with
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: their refractiveness. So they figured out that if they add
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: low iron, potash or lead oxide, it will give it
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: a higher refractive index. But you need less glass to
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: do that. So all of a sudden, glasses became immediately
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: less clunky and a little more comfortable.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And you know you mentioned paintings in
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: that in the first part. But I thought the encyclopedia
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: brownness of this next bit was really pretty great because
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: there is actual evidence of concave lens use in Raphael's
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: painting portrait of Pope Leo ten and two cardinals and
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: they say ten. Huh, what do you say? X?
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know it's ten, but it just sounds cooler
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: as Poplo X.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: So Poplio was part of the Medici family, which had
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: genetic my iopia, as was well known back then. And
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: you can see, and this is where it gets encyclopedia brown.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: You can see in the painting behind the lens, his
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: thumb is smaller, showing that it's a distance lens, and
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: that is just that little detail. For someone to paint
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: that and then other people to notice is pretty great.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's so raphe yel you know. Yeah, And
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: then there was some other advances too that weren't exactly
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: corrective lenses, but people figured out, especially the Dutch, were
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: super into this that if you took corrective lenses that
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: could bend light in different ways, you could see things
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: that were really small, or you could see things that
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: were really far away, and so they were really helpful
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: in developing the microscope and the telescope too.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: That's right. But I know everyone's chomping at the bit saying,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: these glasses that you can hold up to your face
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: are fine. But guys, when did people start wearing glasses?
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: We can go to the seventeenth century finally, when we
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: got the bow spectacle or is it boo?
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: I wonder that myself. I think bow like a bow
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: and arrow bow. It's like the shape of a bow
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: without the string. I think that's what it is.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's what I think it is too. But those
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: are the glasses that still didn't have what do you
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: call the things on the side.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: The temples or the arms now.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: No arms, yeah, no arms yet. But they had a
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: little a little thing where you could slip it over
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: your nose and it would, you know, if you had
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: a good fit, it would sit there. Otherwise you probably
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: still needed to assist it with your fingies.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly the same thing that's still around now. It
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: sits on the bridge of your nose and rests and helps,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: you know, hold your glasses up right. Yeah, so that
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: was a huge advance. It's funny when you look back
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: at this stuff, You're just like, this is all just
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: such low hanging fruit glasses. Guys, why didn't you just
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: put them together immediately? Yeah, And that's just not how
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: it went. I mean, this person contributed this, this person
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: contributed that, and they took millennia to develop, which I
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: just find astounding. It's like a miracle that we have
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: glasses today based on how long and plotting their development was.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Well. Yeah, And what's the funniest thing to me about
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: all of this as I was reading each little development
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: was the whole time, the ears are sitting there on
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: the side of your head, just like, hey, guys, we
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: have two literal anchor points sticking out of the side
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: of everybody's head and still no one I think. In Spain,
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Lvia found that some people would tie a string and
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: then tie it around their ear, like if they were
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: playing you know, soccer or something. I guess but no
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: one still was like, hey, maybe we should make something
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: to sit on those ears.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: So to be fair, there was a guy named Edward
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Scarlett who was an optician in London in the seventeen twenties,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: and he saw what you're talking about, m M. But
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: at the time, so he invented temples those sides those arms,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: but they didn't curve downward to take advantage of those
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: natural anchor points the backs of the ears like the
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: US today. But there was a good reason why, and
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: that was at the time, anyone who is wealthy enough
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: to afford glasses also wore powdered wigs and those things
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: were giant and covered the ears. You couldn't use the
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: back of the ears like that because they were covered up,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: but you could use the temples as pressure points for
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: those those arms that they he came up with.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: So those were just like little squeezes essentially.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they would give you a migraine in like three minutes.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, because I did also see that. Olivia found rather
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: that they some people would it would attach a ribbon,
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: but they still wouldn't time around the ear. They would
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: just tie it around the back of their head. A
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: harlequin yeah, yeah, to those squeeze temples. Finally we get
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: a guy that gets closer. In seven fifty two, an
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: English optician named James ice Coff, I guess had a
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: double hinge side and well, actually I don't think he
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: invented the turnpin template. That was about twenty five years
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: after that, because the turnpin template from or temple, from
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: what I can tell, it goes straight back and then
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: has a hinge and then goes straight down behind the
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: ear ninety degrees. But it doesn't like curve around the ear.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: It was just a big ninety degree drop that sat
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: down a couple of inches even below the ear right.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: But it finally started to take advantage of the back
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: of the ear right.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in a clunky way.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, with these guys putting hinges
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: in there, now you have these arms that can number one,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: fold away for convenience, but also number two. If they're
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: double spring, they can also bend kind of outwards. So
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: now you could just put glasses on and they would
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: fit to your giant head or your tiny head, depending
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: on the size. Immediately thanks to the spring and those hinges.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember seeing those for the first time, and
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: that seemed like a very modern invention in like the eighties,
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: But that's not true.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: At all, No, I don't. I think it took a
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: little while for it to become ubiquitous, but it was
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: older than that for sure.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well I only use you know, I found a
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: number of years ago that the ray Ban Wayfairer is
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: kind of the only sunglass that I look okay in Okay,
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: So I've only worn those, and then I just buy
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: those frames to get my readers made because it's the
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: only only shape that I've ever found works for my face.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: And so I'm a wayfair purist.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: I guess I can do wayfarers and I can do
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: aviators too.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: I can't pull those off.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: The ones that I can't pull off that I really
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: wish I could are the I want to say, carreras,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: but they're not. You know what I'm talking about, those
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Italian ones that are super sleek looking that you basically
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: have to wear a speedo with.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: I think I know exactly what you're talking about.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, those, I wish I could rock those, and they
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: just do not look right on me. And I think
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: we should include a little PSA here for everybody that
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: wears those giant multi colored reflective visor sunglasses. Now nobody
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: looks good in those, which ones the giant visor sunglasses
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: that are super in right now.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: What is visor? Would you mean like a hat visor?
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: No, like like ski goggles, but without the goggle part.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: They're just sunglasses. But they're that massive and colorfully reflective.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: How have you not seen these? I don't know, like
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Oakley's kind of Yeah, I'm sure, please make them. Yes, bigger,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: just imagine bigger.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to look up a picture of these
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: because I have not known. Also, I don't, you know,
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: get around in the world too much, So.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: I mean I'm surprised you at least haven't seen like
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: a delivery person wearing them.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, well, you know it's funny. I just did a
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: rare inshow look up and I see exactly what you're
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: talking about. H I do not like those. I did
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: not know people were wearing those. Oh yeah, they're huge now,
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: but they also when you type indvisors glasses, they make
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: sunglasses with the little visor over them.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Oh that's neat, like the Wane little flip up sunglasses.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Well, it's those are individual for each side. This is
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: I'm sending a picture of this dude right now, because
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: he's rocking pretty hard.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Anyway, where I started with the whole ray ban thing
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: is though they don't make the spring ones where they
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: you know, have a pretty fat head, then luckily they
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: fit my face. But they don't, you know, bend outward,
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: flex outward.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: They have what you called barrel hinges in there. No
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: they don't. They stop it like I guess ninety degrees
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: to the frame. But you can go in and get
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: those little parts of the barrel hinges adjusted to fit
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: your head if they don't automatically fit your head.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Man, you know a lot about this stuff.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Well you know, I've been wearing them since fourth grade.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: And you just pick up facts here or there.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: All right. Just to cite a further example of the
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: push and pull of cool versus not cool, Napoleon needed glasses,
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: thought they make him look weak, so did not wear them,
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: and as a result, I think, like tripped over stuff
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: and people thought he was clumsy.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, he rode a horse and he couldn't see.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: That's kind of dangerous totally. There's another kind of big
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: splash that happened with glasses that made them fashionable. But
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: it was one of those things where something that's ugly
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: and utilitarian becomes fashionable. And it was a type of
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: glasses invented by Benjamin Martin. They ended up being called
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Martin's margins because they're hugely thick frames. And the reason
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: that Martin invented them like that is because they block
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: light coming in from different directions rather than looking forward,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: and that can obscure your vision a little bit. And
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: he's absolutely right, that totally is true. If you're just
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: outside looking wearing say, contacts, and you put on glasses,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: there's a huge difference between the two because the frames
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: block some of the light coming downward into your eyes.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: And everybody made fun of these because they were just
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: so ugly, but people started wearing them, and so everybody
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: who were making fun of them started making and selling
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: them too.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're kind of crazy looking when you look
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: at them now. I have seen some that people that
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: kind of emulated this style. But it was noteworthy too
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: because it was one of the first ones that had
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: any kind of noticeable rim. Usually it was just the
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: lens and kind of the smallest piece of whalebone or
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: wire or something that could host that lens.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Right for sure, Yeah, so the sixteen hundreds I think
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: saw some technical advances, but the nineteenth century was just
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: a boom century for especially using corrective lenses, right, not
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: just fashion or the way that they were made, or
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: getting around and putting arms that reach behind the back
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: of the ear, but like the actual function of glasses
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: became exponentially better in the nineteenth century.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because you know, previous to this, the way you
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: got glasses well as the glasses manufacturer would make a
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: bunch of them and then they would send a salesperson
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: around and a wagon or I guess eventually a car
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: and they would travel around and kind of do like
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: the over the counter readers that what was it, like
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: thirty four percent of Americans actually use those these days.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: Thirty four million, I think, oh.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thirty a lot, Yeah, thirty four million. But it
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: was on the you know, on the road. Basically, you
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: just didn't have a prescription specific to your eye. Someone
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: just came around. You're like, well, these will do I guess.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: But now all of a sudden, you got a real
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: you know, vision test, so they could dial in a
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: prescription for you for the first time.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And that was thanks to people who started inventing
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: tools that are still kind of in use today evolved versions.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: In particular is a guy named Herman von Helmholtz who
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: goes without saying was German. He invented the ophthalmoscope and
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: the ops a opthalometer uphthalmometer, sorry, and the ophthalmoscope lets
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: you see the back of a patient's eyeball, so when
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: they look at your eye and they're shining a light
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: and they're like, don't look into the light, look in
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: my ear or something like that. That's essentially an opthalmoscope
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: that Herman von Helmholtz invented in the eighteen fifties. And
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: then the ophthalmometer. You can assess the essentially the curvature
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: of the back of the retina while you're looking at
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: the retina through an opthalmoscope. And what you have now
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: is basically the the invention of the ability to figure
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: out what kind of corrective lenses you needed. Ophthalmology it
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: was born at this time, and so now they could
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: really take exact measurements and then create the glasses for
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: you specifically, and they just worked so much better.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm glad you took all those words.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: We should we mention that we had to edit out
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: at least one attempt of ophthalmology.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean that was the easiest one, I think,
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: because that's a word people commonly say. But there's something
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: about the optal being at the beginning that just makes
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: it a little brain breaking.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: So horrendous.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: What did you say for the second.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Machine, ophthalmom opthalmometer. I tried to add an extra syllable,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: as per.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: My usual opthalmometer. Yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, that's what meter.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: Upthalmometer.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: Oh boy, are we going to talk about the diopter?
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: I think we should just mention it because it was
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: a huge breakthrough. We don't have to go into the formula.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: But there were a pair of French ophthalmologists who in
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: the eighteen seventies figured out that you could quantify just
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: how much vision correction you needed. And it's mind bending
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: that it's called the diopter and it's a really simple formula,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: but it's really hard to understand. But just take for
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: granted that ophthalmologists understand how to use that. And so
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: if you look at your prescription, whether for glasses or
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: for context, the thing that's labeled power, that number is
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: in diopters, and that just means how much of a
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: refraction correction you need to focus stuff far away or
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: nearby at your retina rather than in front of you
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: or behind you as you naturally would be with your
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: near sightedness or far sidedness.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, is the key to all this that machine that
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: you look through with the lenses that they flip down
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: during the eye test.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: I think that's almost like a like they're zeroing in
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: on their observations of what your eye looks like, and
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: now they've got it narrowed down to like a couple
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: of different diopters. Okay, And it's almost to me like
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: that those traveling salesmen who'd be like, try this pair on,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: try this pair on, but they're doing it with the
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: cool machine that has slides instead. Right, that's my take.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: I could be wrong. I probably am wrong.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: Well, I'd like to hear from optomologists because I know,
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: I know there's a lot more to it than like
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: just sitting down in front of this machine and we'll
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: punch the numbers into the whatever and it'll spit out
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: your prescription. Like there is actual expertise involved.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, they have to like observe and
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: make guesses based on their observation from what I can understand.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: How about that little eyepuff, the little air puff you.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Get it takes some time to get used to. Do
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: you like that?
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: No? I don't like it, but it's definitely I mean
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: all this was brand new to me a decade ago ish. So,
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: like you said, you've been doing it since you were
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: what like twelve eleven?
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, however old you are in fourth grade, ken, I
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: don't know, but yes, around that time. To me, those
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: things are like the same experience as pulling a nose
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: hair out, you know, like you just it's in some
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: weird mass of kit stick way like enjoyable, but it's
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: not really.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, so we're having too much fun here.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: Let's take a break and get serious and we'll talk
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: a little bit more about plastics and bifocals and monocles
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: and sunglasses and everything else right after this. All right,
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: So we promised talks of plastic. After World War One,
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: plastics became a big thing, and resin specifically c R
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: thirty nine became the first big kind of popular plastic
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: used for lenses, which is still a pretty popular choice today.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was a huge advancement in lenses, but
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: people were still making glass lenses for a long time
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: until nineteen seventy two in the United States, the FDA said, Hey,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: walking around with two glass lenses on your eyes, like
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: so close to your eyes is probably kind of scary.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: So now all lenses need to be shatterproof. So a
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: lot of glasses makers just turned to plastics at that point.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and plastic worked. You know, it was much better
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: in a lot of ways because they were you know,
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: turned out to be more durable. Once they figured out
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: the scratch resistance, they wouldn't shatter, you know, near eye.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Obviously you could have a lot more kinds of styles.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: You could have rimless glasses. Yeah, Obviously plastics in the
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: frames created a boom in fashion eyewear, like in the
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: fifties with cat eye glasses and horn rim glasses and
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: tortoiseshell and like the glasses you talked about in the
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: seventies and eighties, the big giant ron know if you
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: mentioned them, the big giant like neuro worn at the
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: end of Casino.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love those, man.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: Jesse Thorn has some of those. I'm so jealous whenever
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: I see those.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: Those seem to be based on a military issue type
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: of glasses, which we didn't say. The Two World Wars
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: helped make glasses normal in the United States because so
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: many soldiers needed them that the government started issuing them
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: like two million plus pairs. But the standard issue military
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: glasses were called were so ugly. They were called informally,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: of course, birth controlled glasses or bcgs. And if you
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: look them up, they are that ugly. They're terrible.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: Did they look like the Denier ones? Are they just giant?
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: They weren't nearly as cool as the DeNiro ones. They
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: were an uglier version of the DeNiro ones.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: Got it. I'm going to look those up too.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're tough to look at.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, giglasses that they're sometimes called as well.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: It's like thanks a lot.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Army exactly. So that was a huge advance, but just
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: kind of dialing it back a little bit time wise.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: There's like an old story that Ben Franklin invented the bifocals,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: and that seems to actually be correct, based on a
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: letter that he wrote to one of his friends in
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: the late seventeen hundreds where he basically described creating bifocals
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: but by having a glassmaker cut his two different sets
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: of glasses in half. Right.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Did the letter say, for instance, I'm reading what I'm writing,
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: and now I'm looking across the room, And now I'm
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: reading what I'm writing, and now I'm looking across the room.
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it had a lot of that, a couple of paragraphs.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, it seems like he did. He
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: said that he could, you know, see his food and
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: look at people at the dinner party. At the same time,
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: progressive lenses came along. This sort of shocks me. I
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: thought they were newer too, but they came along in
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: nineteen fifty nine. And isn't the idea there that it's
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: sort of like a bifocal that's just sort of blended
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: in and less harsh.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: It's actually a trifocal. There's distant, mid, and near all
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: mixed together, and it just depends, I guess, on where
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: your eye focuses. I think it's magic. Basically. They're also
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: called multifocal lenses.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think they offered me those just so I
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: could wear glasses all the time. Yeah, And I was like,
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: I don't want to wear glasses all the time. If
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: I don't have to, I don't putting them on to read.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: There's a theory that you should use glasses as little
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: as possible and use the lowest power, say, contacts as
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: possible because your eyes can get dependent on the stronger
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: prescription or wearing them all the time. I don't know
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: if that's a folk tale or something, but it definitely
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: intuitively makes sense.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it totally makes sense.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, then you made the right choice.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: Can we talk about monocles?
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: Yes, let's please. I think this is the high point
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: of this episode.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, monocles are kind of fun. If you don't know
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: what a monocle is, I guess I'm assuming is the
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: single round lens that would you would just sort of
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: made to fit your eye as you were wealthy if
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: you had one, and you would just sort of stick
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: it in there and sort of squint around it a
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: bit to hold it in. But from the very beginning,
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: it seems like the monocle was it kind of just
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: said one thing, which is, look at me, I'm a pompous,
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: rich person who wants you to know that I'm pompous
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: and rich.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which is that's the reason why Eustace Tilly, the
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: mascot for the New Yorker has a monocle, right, yeah,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: or the Monopoly Man, Yeah, has a monocle. It can
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: also be exotic, like the count from Sesame Street. Where's
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: a monocle? Yeah? I looked this up. By the way,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: this isn't off the top of my head. The Penguin,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: the Burgess Meredith Penguin from the k sixties, Batman monocle,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Colonel Clink. Yeah, Actually, what the point was of his monocle?
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: Maybe it's sort of evil villain.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It made him eat more evil, didn't it. I
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: think so, But I'm not quite sure how. But there's
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: a long history of people wearing monocles. But one thing
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: that I had noticed before that I never really kind
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: of sat down and put together is that they were
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: also used in the early twentieth century by women who
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: were eschewing traditional gender roles.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: I didn't know that.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, think so. Have you ever seen Madonna wearing like
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: a tuxedo and a monocle. She's basically making a nod
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: to like Weimar Republic German women, probably lesbians of the era,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: who were basically dressing like men in One of the
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: big fashion accessories for that was the monocle.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay, that makes sense.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's pretty cool.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: Dietrich Intomaggio exactly what a great song. God so good?
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: All right. Should we talk a little bit about sunglasses, yes,
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: take it away. Yeah, this is I mean, sunglasses have
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: been around a long time as far as something to
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: wear on your face to shield your eyes from the sun,
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: not necessarily like darker lenses, but or dark lenses. But
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: Inuit people, you know, one thousand years ago, were wearing
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: sun goggles, which essentially, you know, because of the bright
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: sun and the snow was either like wood or ivory
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: or something that fit around your eyes and had a
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: little little slits cut almost almost like sort of the
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: old tanning bed goggles that you would wear exactly if
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: you were into that in the eighties.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: And again like those big frames that kind of blocked
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: some light. They did that, but the slits also narrowed
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: your vision too, so it actually focused further away too.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: It's pretty But what about lenses. They started darkening those
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: a while ago, too, didn't they.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think as far back as Samuel Peeps in
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, the famous diarist whose name I finally
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: pronounced correctly. He tended I think his class is green
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: to protect his eyes from candle light when he was
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: riding late at night. So they've been around a really
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: long time, and even before that, Like, I think there's
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: a legend that Emperor Nero used ground emeralds as basically
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: sunglasses when he hung out at the coliseum.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: You know, this is not a look that looks good
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: on me at all. But when I was just in
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: La I went to dinner with friends of the show,
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: David Reese, oh cool, and Paula Tompkins and his great
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: wife Janey. They all say hello, by the way, nice hello,
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: paul You know, mister fashion wore vision glasses that were
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: tinted blue, and they looked really really sharp on him.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: I could never pull it off, but they looked really good.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: Paula Tompkins can pull off basically anything. He knows exactly
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: what he can wear, and if there's a wide range
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: and he does it really well.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: Guess what color shirt was.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess a different shade of blue.
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it went perfectly.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Did he wear a thick plaid like not The coat
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: was thick, but the plaid was thick. The pattern of
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: the plaid was a very thick, prominent plaid blue out jacket.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: It was actually a white suit with white Chuka boots
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: and a solid blue shirt with the blue glasses. Very
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: very sharp.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: I very rarely say the word wow, but that run
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: was well learned.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: But you found I think, as we're just blue blue,
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: but you found some good information on to me magic
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: that happens when you were inside with clear glasses and
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: you walk outside and they turn into sunglasses.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, transition lenses, which it turns out transitions is a
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: proprietary eponym basically like Kleenex. Because it's so successful, everybody
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: calls any what are called photochromic lenses transition lenses. So
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: transition lenses are photochromic, but not all photochromic lenses are
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: transition essentially, is what I'm saying. Yeah, the thing that
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: strikes me, Chuck, is like they've been around since the
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, because I definitely identify them with late eighties,
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: early nineties.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean you found the stuff on how
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: it were, and I still don't understand how that's not
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: just black magic.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: Well, there's basically there's certain kinds of dyes called photochromic dyes,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: and the more they're exposed to UV light, the darker
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: they get because the more light they absorb. And so
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: they've actually figured out how to include these in the lenses.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: So when there's not UV light, say you're inside the
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: photochromic dyes are arranged as certain kinds of molecules, and
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: that's they're transparent. But when they're exposed to UV they
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: break apart and form different molecules which absorb light much more,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: which darkens them. And since there's a bunch of them
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: in the lenses, the lenses turn dark and you effectively
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: have sunglasses. And then when you go back out of
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: the UV light exposure, they go back to their normal
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: molecular configuration.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: Just incredible, I thought so too.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: Hats off to Warby Parker by the way, for explaining
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: that understandably.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: I think, thank you, mister Warby.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: What about scratch resistant lenses? Ca these to me are
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: this is the story of the show.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's a lot of great facts of
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: the show in here. The proprietary eponym of progressive certainly
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: one of them. But you know, ground Lindsay you said,
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: you know, in nineteen seventy two, this one the FDA
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: said you can't have glass breaking right in front of
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: your eyeball. So the plastics came around and they were
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: great for not shattering, but they were very scratchy or
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: scratch a bole, I guess, And NASA actually developed technology
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: to try and make you know, astronaut helmet face advisors
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: not scratchy. And so this is one of those NASA
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: inventions that made it to the regular world. When Foster
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: Grant in nineteen eighty three, who I don't think we
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: mentioned they were sort of the first big sunglasses company.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: They weren't the biggest in the eighties, just because they had,
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: you know, the coolest commercials. They had been around since
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties selling sunglasses. So they said, hey, NASA,
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: we want to license that technology to make our lenses
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: scratch resistant. And you know, all of a sudden, that's
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: just sort of the I mean, I think you can't
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: even get them that aren't scratch resistant these days.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: Right, No, there's no point you would go through glasses
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: every couple months. Basically, why would you do that save
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: a couple of bucks? Yeah, basically yeah, and you'd end
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: up buying way more glasses and spending way more money probably,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: But those scratch resistant lenses just out of the gate.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: They made glasses last ten times longer, which even went
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: beyond glass, like how good glass lenses could last too.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: So yeah, that was a huge advancement as well.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: All right, well if you want to look at today,
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, we're not going to talk about context too much.
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: That may be its own episode at some point.
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: But they did debut in eighteen eighty seven, which to
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: me is a startling thing that people were inserting a
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: glass lens from eighteen eighty seven onto their eyeball because
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: that's what it had to be.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: Even in nineteen sixty when they were like the soft
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: contacts were invented, Uh huh, they were still pretty hard
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: and you would not want to have worn them.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: Do you do the disposable ones?
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Multifocal?
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: So what does that mean?
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: It means that I can see far away in the
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: middle ground and nearby basically how based on how my
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: iris focuses.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: And then you use those for a day and then
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: they go away and then you use another.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're supposed to use them for a day, but
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: I use them for three to five days until they
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: get uncomfortable.
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: It's just set the waste.
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: Can you can you sleep in those?
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: No, you're not supposed to. I used to all the
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: time because I hated taking them out and putting them in,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: And then I grew up and I'm like, yeah, I
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: should not do that because it's really bad for your eyes.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It just seems like a lost sort of time
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: when hey, don't anyone move, I'd lost a contact, right,
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: or the little the little cases and washing them out
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: night and that kind of thing.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because there weren't disposables. It was all of
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: those contexts. It was basically like your retainer, You do
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: not lose your retainer, right, you know, same thing with
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: your contacts.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: Oh goodness, we lift through a great era, I think.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: All right, So today, if you look at some stats,
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: the one hundred and sixty six US adults where prescription eyeglasses.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: That's about sixty four percent of people, Like you mentioned earlier,
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: thirty four and a half million people where the over
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: the counter readers. About forty five million wear contacts, and
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: that is that's a lot of people with That feels
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: like most adults have some sort of eye correction going on.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: Because all of us went through school and had to
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: read books all the time.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: I guess so, it's not many people that are in
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: their fifties and up that don't need any sort of
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: glasses or lenses at all.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Right, you can thank your public school for that. I guess,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: so you got anything else about glasses?
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: No, that was a fun one. I like these histories,
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: like the dentistry when these are fun for me.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought of the dentistry one when I was
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: researching this too. Well, thanks again Olivia for helping us
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: with this one, and thank you for listening. And since
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: Chuck said he doesn't have anything else right now, it's
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: time for listener mail.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this just a little shout out, you know,
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: when it comes to talking about stuff on the show,
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: like any sort of you know, the latest words that
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: people should use in terms of like gender and things
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: like that. Like we always try and stay on top
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: of things, while we always also try and speak to
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: like a wide audience and make sure things are super
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: clear to everybody. And it's a delicate balance for us,
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: so we try. And this was just a letter of
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: thanks from someone from Canada. Hey, guys, just listening to
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: the Share episode and I wanted to stop and say
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: thank you the way you talked about her son, Chaz,
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: who is transgender, was perfect. You gendered him correctly, even
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: in referring to him pre trans when you mentioned when
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: he was born. I know it might sound silly, but
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: it made me glassy eyed to hear. As a trans person.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: It was so hard to be in a world that
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: seems determined to hate us or make it harder for
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: us to exist as the normal humans that we are.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: So hearing you talk about Chaz and not make his
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: transness a bigger deal than it needed to be. And
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: here you talk about him in a way we trans
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: people advocate that we should be talked about. Really move me.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: Thank you for working so hard to get it right.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: I know it hasn't always gone perfectly, but I know
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: you care a lot and want to get it right
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: every time. This is part of why after fifteen years,
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: I've been listening every week. Thanks for all you do
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: and for keeping me learning new things, making me laugh
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: while I do. I hope you have an amazing weekend, friends,
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: And that is Lucy from Canada.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: Awesome. Thanks Lucy. We appreciate that big time. That was
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: a good one, Chuck, thanks for picking that.
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we do our best folks.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: If you want to do a hat tip to us
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: like Lucy did, we'd love those. We'll take those any
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: day of the week, and you can send them to
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: us via email at stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.