See Eyeglasses

I depend on my eyeglasses to see clearly, without them I literally can't make out much of anything, it's just a big blur. How did cavemen and people in history before eyeglasses were available manage to see without prescription eyeglasses if they had poor to horrible vision. Were they rendered useless or considered handicap, maybe even thought of as going blind?

The truth is that nobody knows who invented eyeglasses. At some point in Italy between 1268 and 1289 someone came up with the idea, but the actual inventor remains anonymous. What we do know is that the earliest lenses were made from quartz and were usually set into bone, metal, or leather. As soon as early opticians figured out how to make glass without bubbles and other obstructions, they started making lenses out of glass

2007-12-09 23:35:45 by overcast

What's the latest trend in fashion eyewear? Loren talks to Carolyn Rijke for the Insider scoop.

Based on the huge proportion of the population that needs glasses or contact lenses today, I can't imagine that a similar proportion of the population in ancient times didn't have similar vision problems. How did they manage to see back then before corrective lenses were invented? For example in Roman times, which was far already a very advanced society, how did people manage to see? And in antiquity, how did people manage to hunt and survive in the wild without good vision? Did those individual simply die before reaching adult age? Is the human race developing more and more vision problems as we are moving forward in time?

Unfortunately this seems to be the case as more people are living longer and then we have things like books, computers, homework, hand-held games etc- that help contribute to the increasing frequency of vision problems. Also wearing glasses/contacts can make your vision worse forcing you to be more dependent on them to see.
In ancient times people didn't need glasses as they generally lived an active lifestyle outdoors and many people died before the age where they would need reading glasses (40-50 years old).

2008-11-22 20:49:29 by JPA

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I know how reading glasses work. I want to know about magnifying eyeglasses (glasses you wear). Do they enable you see distant objects (4 meters or more) in a magnified view?

Not technically. If you are talking about glasses you wear, they are actually the same thing as reading glasses, just made specifically for people with farsightedness. People who are nearsighted use minus-powered lenses to lengthen the focal length b/c their eyes are too long. Farsighted people use plus-powered lenses to shorten the focal length b/c their eyes are too short. Reading glasses are made the same (with plus-powers) but are used for people over 40 who cannot focus anymore (the lens inside the eye is no longer flexible).

2010-02-09 23:35:59 by Amar

I'm helping my best friend pick out glasses - she wants to get something trendy and she thinks she's got a cross between a round and heart-shaped face. Aren't there some websites out there where you can actually see a heart-shaped face, for example, and you can see what it looks like with the different glasses? Thanks!

Yes, try this website: http://www.pearlevision.com/

2006-10-27 20:31:20 by Mishy

A lady at a large department store vision center told me that I could not see my expired prescription for glasses from 2003. Can they actually withhold medical records from me?


I just got an eye exam and the prescription was not anywhere near the same as my previous. (The last pair were for a slight astigmatism in my right eye.) I lost my old glasses this summer and

So I have these reading glasses that are super annoying.

Trina, You do not need to see your 5 year old prescription and you need not worry because just about every optician and optometrist can take the glasses you have and examine the lens in an instrument in the store which will read the prescription from the lens itself. If you have not gotten any new lenses in the past 5 years, then you are overdue for a routine eye exam to see if you need a different prescription. Next time you get a new prescription, immediately make a copy and store it at home or carry it with you when you travel so that you could replace a broken lens anywhere you travel in a different city.

2008-10-02 15:16:37 by space icecream