Did you know that when Dave Navarro first met Carmen Electra, rumor has it that he was so taken with her beautiful eyes that he went out and bought over a hundred pairs of sunglasses for her to wear to cover her eyes whenever she left her house so no one would fall in love the way he did? ~ Matchbook: The Diary of a Modern-Day Matchmaker
Can’t say I ever had Dave’s problem. Or was it Carmen’s? My issue is the opposite. My eyes are fairly expressive and always honest. Sometimes it’s better if they aren’t making a liar out of what’s coming out of my mouth. If I could see as well through shades as my regular spectacles, I’d wear them all the time. I’m probably not the first to have that thought. In any case, people have been appreciating their primary function for many years. More years than I would have guessed, and it might surprise you, as well. Let’s take a look.
Nobody loves a glare, and they never have
The Sunglass Museum* was my first stop for details. Turns out the prehistoric Inuits fashioned walrus ivories to limit the amount of light they had to deal with in the Arctic tundra. No, they weren’t shades, per se. Just solid material with a slit cut into bone–or wood–to mitigate snow blindness. How did they keep them on? The Heddles website tells us that the Inuit used string. And that was made of what? I don’t know. But back to how far back we’re talking. The prehistoric period is defined as up to 3,000,000 years ago through 3100 BC. I find the degree of deductive creativity exhibited by those glasses to be incredible, considering the lack of modern tools and the inability to communicate as easily as we do now. *And how is there such a thing as a sunglass? I don’t know, but we’ll move on.
There’s no credible information about improvements to those rudimentary shades until the 12th century. The Chinese created smoky quartz (opaque) lenses for judges to use, but they weren’t designed for eye protection. The judges wanted to “disguise their facial expressions”. I told you I wasn’t the first. Hundreds of years later, an eye doctor became interested in helping his patients improve their vision, and he created glasses with green lenses, a type we often see today. But that was nowhere near the end of the story.
Shades through the centuries
In 18th-century Italy, ladies began carrying those green-tinted glasses to reduce the glare from criss-crossing canals as they rode through Venice, according to Heddels. Those glasses were called vetri di dama (lady glasses). It is no coincidence that the stars aligned for this improvement, because at that time, some of the most talented glass blowers practiced their art in Italy. It was there that craftsmen designed the connecting material over the bridge of the nose and arms over the ears so that users didn’t have to hold lens up to their eyes.
In 1929 Sam Foster became the first to mass-produce sunglasses. According to the Sunglass Museum, sunglasses became a fashion statement in Atlantic City, and it was years before the next iteration made an appearance. In 1935, the U.S. military commissioned American Optical to create aviators, per North Central Institute. The original version fit under the [real] aviators’ headgear and had slightly convex lenses to cover the entire field of vision.
By 1936, several companies jumped into the fray with their aviator designs, but it was Bausch & Lomb that called theirs the Ray-Ban Aviators. And it was their product that General Douglas MacArthur wore when he landed on the beaches of the Philippines. After the war, people were all over military-related products, and by then, they were available for civilians to purchase.
- In 1913, a British chemist used an element called cerium to develop the first lens that filtered out ultraviolet light.
- Polarized sunglasses were created in 1936 by Edwin H. Land, who started the Polaroid business.
- Robert Smith developed anti-fogging goggles in 1965.
- Elton John claims to own 250,000 pairs of sunglasses.
- Someone breaks or sits on sunglasses every 14 seconds.
Grateful for the benefits
Some of the pluses are mentioned above, in one way or another, but there’s more. Many of us are hypersensitive to light, and in the worst cases, excessive light is a source of headaches. Foster Grant piles on the list with:
- Protecting eyes from dust and wind
- Enhancing athletic performance by increasing comfort
- Increasing safety by avoiding (or mitigating) glare while driving
- Preventing wrinkles (not sure I’m buying that, but it’s hard to disprove–where’s the control group?)
- Supporting recovery after eye surgery
All in all, I don’t know how people managed without sunglasses a thousand years ago. But then, they didn’t drive, probably didn’t worry themselves about wrinkles, and I’m fairly sure they didn’t have eye surgery. And yet, even without the motivations of our modern-day conveniences, a relative few innovators persisted in pursuing improvements in eye protection.
So, I’m wondering. Is someone, somewhere, working on solutions for today’s minor annoyances? What about those drivers who can’t bring themselves to use their turn signals when changing lanes or changing direction? What if we had automatic turn signals? That is, in 50 years, will cars automatically signal every driver’s intentions? And, as a bonus, have a third signal that means, “going straight”? Of course, I don’t normally get bent out of shape over things like that. I’m just asking for a friend.
