Jenny Benjamin
👤 PersonAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Wow.
Oh, well, they used all sorts of chemicals to color glass.
I mean, if you think about it, right, cathedrals and churches had been using colored glass already.
So there wasn't any issue about finding colored glass.
Yeah.
But cutting it and fitting it into a frame for eyeglasses was...
It had to be thick enough to endure.
Thin glass would just break on you, right?
You'd put it in your pocket and that'd be the end of it.
Manufacturing of glass had to get a little bit better.
By 1561, they were making colored lenses and the popular colors then were green and blue.
Really?
Yeah.
Cool.
That's kind of hot, right?
Yeah.
But again, it had this connotation of infirmity.
Like you needed to protect your eyes from the sun because you couldn't handle the sun or your eyes were weak, quote unquote weak.
So you wore colored lenses.
It was a signal.