THE OPTICIAN'S CRAFT

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 136, 5 December 1929, Page 26

THE OPTICIAN'S CRAFT

ITS TERCENTENARY

300 YEARS OF SPECTACLES

With modern scientific progress ia the various phases oi! the optician's craft reflected in tlie universal evidence of the extent of the boon conferred on humanity by that art, there is, perhaps, a tendency to overlook the debt owed to mediaeval experimenters with devices Cor coping with wauinp vision, and the genesis of actual spectacle making. At all events, in recognising the development to which that early endeavour has led, and the countless members of the world's communities who benefit by the optician's craft to-day, it is interesting to recall that just three hundred years ago the first charter was granted a company of English spectacle makers. In London, says a writer in the Melbrurne "Age," this tercentenary has been commemorated by a congress and exhibition held at the Northampton lolytccbnic Institute, and by a goorl deal of interesting correspondence in tlio newspapers. WHO WAS THE INVENTOR? Although it was the seventeenth century in which this charter was grant.d to the "Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers," spectacles were known in England before that period, while Continental allusions to them are to be traced back to the latter part of the thirteenth century. The identity of the actual inventor, however, remains a matter of historical doubt. For, while the honour has been credited to a Florentine monk, de Spina, in 1285, it has iilso been claimed in some quarters for kr.gland's Roger 13acon (1214-04)— i Friar" Bacon, to whom the invention of gunpowder, and also the air pump has been ascribed—-whilst some support the claims of Geethals as the originator of spectacles. Spectacles are mentioned in German ballads of the closing period of the thirteenth century, and there is frequent reference in four-teenth-century documents. On the other hand, support for the Italian claim is to be found on a tombstone in a church at Florence, and also in a record of a sermon preached some twenty years later by a monk * Pi KJ . On the tomb is an inscription, dated 1317, stating that the "inventor of spectacles" lies buried there. In the sermon in question, which was delivered "a I February, 1305, allusion is made to spectacles having been "invented not twenty years ago," and the preacher claims to nave met the man who first invented them. Deducting twenty years from the date of the sermon gives the year 1285, the date associated with the claim that it was a Florentine monk who first invented spectacles as an aid to vision. GUILDS OP SPECTACLE MAKERS. During the fifteenth century the early development of spectacle manufacture would doubtless receive an additional incentive by the beginning of the improvement in reading facilities associated with the advent of printing. By the sixteenth century there were records of regular guilds of spectacle makers in. Germany, Italy, and France. As to activities in England at that time there is no definite account prior to the formal incorporation of the company in 1629, for the company's hall and its records were destroyed in the great London fire. The guilds consisted of organised companies of craftsmen, including masters journeymen, and apprentices. At a later period spectacle makers linked up with other merchant bodies. During the early stages of the industry spectacles were often hawked around by pedlers to customers who had to make more or less of a chance selection an the hope that the choice would approximately suit their vision. In some eases glasses were classified by the vague description of "young" or old," and it was possible to see frames stamped with a figure corresponding to the age of a person whose sight the maker assumed the glasses would suit. The framing together of separate eye-glasses was the first definite step towards the pair of glasses aspectacles, and it was not until a later period that convenient side pieces were evolved. The curved bridge over the nose was a comparatively late development. The fere-runner of the modern hinged piece appeared in many varieties. In the sixteenth century, when leather mounts were used, the leather was continued in long strips from the outer edge of each lens, and the -nds of the leather were tied together behind the head. Chinese had cords attached with weights carried over the ears. There was also the type which had a strip of metal that passed up over the top of the head, while other types were provided with hooks for the ears. Hinged side pieces appeared in the eighteenth century. MAGNIFYING GLASSES. Eliminating spectacles from the consideration of lenses and magnifying glasses, the process of human artificial aids to vision possesses a much more classical antiquity. London "Times " in its ieferences to the 300 th anniversary of the London spectacle makers' charter, alludes to the globe filled with water used by the Eomans and Greeks to enlarge the appearance of an object, and quotes the declaration of Count yon Muller that magnifying glasses were known 1800 years before Christ The story of Archimedes focusing by artificial means the rays of the sun on his enemies at the defence of Syracu. • is.also recalled, and a pair of lenses is said to have- been recovered from a sarcophagus in ancient Carthage. With reference to the single eye glass, which immediately foreshadowed the development of jfneetacles mediaeval monks found them useful in deciphering ancient manuscripts. The oldest picture in which eye glasses are depicted is believed to be the portrait of Cardinal Ugone in a fresco by Thomas of Alodena, painted in 1302 m the church of St. Nicholas