David King Dunaway

Well, we'll never know.

But I can tell you that the Chinese were using tinted lenses to protect their eyes from glasses for many thousands of years, although they did not serve to correct vision.

There is a story that the Emperor Nero...

In Rome, he of the famous fiddle used to observe sporting contests through a large emerald which served to shade his vision the same way sunglasses did now.

In the United States, the first sunglasses appeared on aviators who had the most critical need for them.

And even today, the aviator style of glasses popularized in films is very important and very useful.

It's everywhere.

You could see it as you walk down the street.

The Ray-Ban style that the Blues Brothers wore, dark green sunglasses that famous musicians and Hollywood performers use.

These are really a product of the 1930s and 40s as people realized that, yes, it sure would be nice to block the intensity of the sun, particularly in a place where that sun is so bright as it is in California.

Contact lenses were first invented as a medical device for people whose eyes would not completely close.

And they were invented in Switzerland, probably in the 1870s, around there.

The first contact lenses of all were actually made from clipped off pieces of the bottom of test tubes, if you can imagine that, sticking that in your eye.

Then, starting in the early 20th century, we had various kinds of lenses that

were wearable but unbearable uh and it isn't really until 1936 or or maybe five years after that that the development of high quality plastics allowed the creation of a

a wearable lens, the so-called hard contact lenses.

Now, starting in the 1970s and 80s, soft contact lenses became available and long-duration wear contact lenses emerged.

Well, that's a great question.

I don't know that that can ever occur.

LASIK and other forms of surgery on the eyes work, but they don't work for all people.