Mike Carruthers

He's a professor of English at the University of New Mexico and the University of Sao Paulo, and he's author of a book called A Four-Eyed World, How Glasses Change the Way We See.

Hey, David, welcome to Something You Should Know.

A pleasure to be here.

Well, as I said in the intro, when you think about it, it's such an incredible invention, and it probably goes back a long way.

So how did it all start?

Wow!

I think it's surprising for a lot of people that eyeglasses are that old.

And did they look kind of like if you saw them on somebody, you would go, oh yeah, he's wearing glasses.

Is the invention of eyeglasses associated with someone, a person, an inventor, somebody who takes credit for that?

And did it take off right away or did it take a long time for the world to adopt eyeglasses?

Do we have any sense of how many people require corrective lenses today?

Well, when I was thinking about this, when I saw that we were going to talk about this topic, one of the things that I find so interesting is that eyeglasses...

a corrective thing, that they fix a deficiency.

And that, you know, a lot of people will, like when they get their picture taken, they'll take their glasses off as if they don't want to look like they wear glasses.

And yet, a lot of people wear glasses as a fashion accessory.

I know people who wear glasses that have no lenses in them just to wear the frames because it's a look they have.

So it kind of straddles like it's...

It's a medical device, and yet it's also a fashion accessory.

When did it become a business?

When did people really start going to eye doctors and opticians?