Sadly no one knows who invented the first pair of glasses. The glasses started to appear in paintings around 1287. Around the 1300’s the Venetian Glassmaker’s Guild started to enforce laws on the glasses. Unfortunately they made it illegal for glasses to be made with glass lenses. They now had to be made with the more expensive rock crystal. In 1352 the only people that wore glasses were the rich, well educated, and the Italian Clergy. After the Gutenberg Press was invented more common folk began to wear glasses. The glasses were no longer made with rock crystal. They were made with wood, lead, copper, bone, and even horns. I think that the glasses have really helped us today. Glasses have helped us today because they help people that can not see very well. So I think that Glasses were a great invention. I think that without glasses there would be many more car accidents and we would probably have many more illiterate people.
Eyeglasses in the Renaissance
Eyeglasses today
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http://www.mce.k12tn.net/renaissance/inventions.htm