What Did People Do Before Eyeglasses?

Old spectacles on a book

Somewhere in the vicinity of Pisa, Italy, around 1286, an unknown craftsman fastened two glass lenses to a frame likely made of wood or bone to create the first eyeglasses.

With approximately two out of three adults in the United States today requiring some form of visual aid, it’s safe to say that invention has been well received. But even though 1286 is well before any of us first discovered the splendor of improved eyesight, it’s relatively recent in the larger picture of human existence. So how did people with subpar vision get by before there was a convenient LensCrafters to pop into?

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There’s not much historical evidence explaining how our prehistoric ancestors fared in the absence of visual aids, so we’re left to use some combination of deduction and common sense to determine how, say, a sight-impaired individual would keep up with the pack in a group of hunter-gatherers.

A person with imperfect vision could still be useful to a group simply because sharp eyesight to read signs, documents, and the like wasn’t necessary in prehistoric times. As civilization progressed, those with visual impairments could even find their condition produced certain advantages. A myopic (nearsighted) person, for example, could find themselves steered toward a craftsman role for their ability to focus on detail.

That said, humankind used visual aids for many centuries before the first eyeglasses appeared in the Middle Ages. Here are a few of the tools that helped those dealing with hyperopia (farsightedness) and other sight-related challenges.

Early Lenses

Archaeological digs in the eastern Mediterranean area have uncovered the existence of plano-convex lenses (flat on one side and rounded on the other) made of glass and rock crystal that date back to the Bronze Age. The most well known example is the Nimrud lens, which was found in the remains of an Assyrian palace in modern-day Iraq. While it’s unknown what these lenses were used for, some of them magnify objects between seven and nine times, rendering them useful for work on items in close quarters.

In his book Renaissance Vision From Spectacles to Telescopes, Vincent Ilardi suggests that the presence of holes or “resting points” on some of these lenses indicates they may have been propped up in a way that allowed artisans to use their hands. Additionally, he offers the discovery of a 5,300-year-old Egyptian ivory knife handle with carved microscopic figures as evidence that ancient Egyptians had a means for providing vision enhancements.

These weren’t the only civilizations to discover uses for lenses. A 2.3-gram convex crystal lens was found in the tomb of a son of Chinese Emperor Liu Xiu, who lived in the first century CE. Its creation was fostered by the optical studies published centuries earlier by Chinese scholars, including the philosopher Mozi and King Liú Ān.

Green Gemstones

The ancient Romans seemed to believe that emeralds and other green gemstones could be used as a means for soothing the eyes and possibly providing visual aid. One famous example appears in Pliny the Elder's Natural History, where the author notes how Emperor Nero watched a gladiatorial event with the assistance of a smaragdus — an emerald or similar gem. However, historians largely believe that the stone may not have magnified the spectacle so much as it helped to block the glare of the sun.

Water Globes

In his first volume of Naturales Quaestiones (Natural Questions), the Roman philosopher Seneca described the magnifying effect of water in glass: “Letters, however small and dim, are comparatively large and distinct when seen through a glass globe filled with water.” His contemporary Pliny the Elder also noted the lenslike qualities that resulted from combining these elements, although his observation was related to the potential for flammability when focusing the sun's rays through a glass water vessel. While the result may have been satisfactory, Seneca's lack of follow-up thoughts suggest that this particular method of magnification likely wasn't widely used.

Mirrors

In the same sentence describing the magnification qualities of the water vessels, Seneca wrote, "I have already said there are mirrors which increase every object they reflect." Indeed, concave metal, glass, or crystal mirrors could be used to magnify smaller texts for those with vision problems. As noted by Ilardi in Renaissance Vision From Spectacles to Telescopes, French author Jean de Meun wrote of the efficacy of this tool in the late-13th-century poem “Le Roman de la Rose,” although there aren’t many other documented uses of mirrors for this purpose.

Reading Stones

A major development in the area of visual tools came with the invention of reading stones. Often credited to ninth-century Andalusian scholar Abbas ibn Firnas, the concept of curved glass surfaces being used to magnify print was discussed at length in Arab mathematician Ibn al-Haytham's 1021 Book of Optics, which later received a wider audience with its translation to Latin.

Typically made from quartz, rock crystal, and especially beryl, reading stones were fashioned in a plano-convex shape, with the flat side against the page of a book and the rounded top providing a clear view of the lettering below. Initially used to assist the elderly with faltering vision, the stones became popular among younger readers as well, especially as beryl was said to possess magic and healing powers.

One surviving example of such reading stones are the 11th- to 12th-century Visby lenses discovered in Gotland, Sweden, in 1999. Along with providing excellent magnification of tiny text, many of these quartz lenses are mounted in silver, suggesting a decorative purpose as well.

It's unknown if the Visby lenses were the work of a local professional or somehow made their way from Muslim regions where other reading stones first appeared. Regardless, the quality of the images generated by these artifacts, and the craftsmanship that went into their creation, underscores how people were hardly left grasping in the dark for assistance in the days before eyeglasses became commonplace.