SPECTACLES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 7 January 1928, Page 9

SPECTACLES.

WHO INVENTED THEM? A FTER visiting the “Mostra Univeror university Exhibition, now be’ng held in Rome, with its ■ uaint and magnificent, collections, there can remain no c.oubt in one. mind as to the fact that Italy has been .he mother of spectacles. Professor Albertof i. a pio.essor ot the University- of Rndua and doven 0.. the oculists of Italy, lias collected a number of ancient and modern books about .spectacles, and has illustrated tins valuable material in a treatise which

he has dedicated to Senator Isidore del Lungo. The latter had attiibutec* tiie invention of spectacles for shortsighted and long-sighted persons to the Dominican monk, Era Alessandro della Spina, of Pisa. But Professor Albertotti, whose authority in this mat’er is unchallenged, is ol opinion that the glory of first making spectacles must be attributed to Venue, the home o: glass and pure crystal. From a codex of the ‘‘Capitolaii delle Arti” of the State of Venice, dated 1301, it is found that severe penalties were applied to dishonest spectacle-makers who used simple glass instead of pure crystal. Another document proving the antiquity of spectacles is a portrait of Cardinal Hugh of Provence, painted by Thomas of

Modena, in the chapter of St. Nieholat at Treviso, in which the Cardinal is represented as wearing speetac.es. The Minister of Education. Siguoi Fedele, ha,s also lent a rare picture by the Umbrian painter, Niccolo AJuiiu«, representing the Virgin and Chiiti with St. Jerome, who is reading a hook with a large pair of spectacles across his nose. Then there is a beautiful collectioi of sixteenth and seventeenth-century mountings for spectacles in gold ant. silver, some of them real works ot art. it must not be forgotten, however, that the invention of spectacle's is attributed by some to Roger Bacon, who made spectacles of such perfection that he was suspected to tie in league with the devil.