The evolution of vision correction devices
Introduction
The purpose of this essay is to discuss the evolution of vision correction devices based on
the evolution theory of Charles Darwin. Refractive error has long been a major public
health problem. The popularity of both short-sightedness and presbyopia, which is a
progressively hardening of the eye’s lens with age, resulting in the diminishing in the
ability to focus on close objects, are increasing dramatically worldwide. Thus, some
devices, mainly glasses and contact lens, are invented for vision correction. Glasses are
lenses with frame being worn in front of the eyes by people mainly suffered from
far-sightedness, short-sightedness and presbyopia, so it is also named eyeglasses. Contact
lens is a medical device which has the same purpose as eyeglasses to correct vision. With
an increasing number of people suffering from different vision problems in the past few
centuries, the demand for vision correction devices keeps rising. Yet, evolution of these
vision correction devices has not been stopped in order to better fit human use. This essay
will concentrate on the evolution of the design and uses of them.
History of vision correction devices
In the past, glasses were the only vision correction device. Yet, they were first used to
magnify letters or assist in reading but not correct vision until 1000. Due to this reason,
glasses were also named “reading stones” at that time. In between 1220 and 1235, an
Englishman Robert Grosseteste mentioned there was optics which could help to read the
tiny things at incredible distances in his work “On the Rainbow”. Few years afterwards,
Roger Bacon, an English philosopher, recorded the magnifying function of the lenses in
1262. Compared with the glasses nowadays, the glasses in the past were placed above the
reading materials instead of placing on our noses. This makes the difference between the
earliest glasses and a modern one.
Fig.1 Reading stones in the past Fig.2 Reading Eyeglasses now
The inventor of eyeglasses is a mystery, but it can be found that the first eyeglasses
appeared between 1200 and 1300 in Italy. A sermon given on February 23, 1306: “it is not
yet twenty years since there was found the art of making eyeglasses, which makes for good
vision” suggested the first appearance of eyeglasses happened in about 1286. Furthermore,
there was a painting by Tomaso da Modena in 1352 showing a person wearing eyeglasses
to read the scriptorium, which provides a pictorial evidence for the existence of eyeglasses
