I Can't Find My Pince-Nez Trivia Quiz

Answer: Italy

The first documented use of spectacles was made by two Catholic clerics, Friars Giordano da Rivalto and Alessandro della Spina, in Pisa, Italy during the late 13th Century. The glasses were formed by taking two convex shaped glass pieces that were encased in a frame with a short handle. The two handles were then connected by a rivet. It is unknown who created this simple riveted eyeglass. Friar Giordana is credited for mentioning the "occhiale" (Latin for eyeglass) in his sermons and calling the discovery one of the world's best and most necessary arts.

Italy was then and remains a leader in the production of glass. The famous Venice Murano Glass Guild was formed in 1284 and had regulations regarding the production of "eye discs" in place by 1300. The example in the picture is an intact rivet spectacle from 16th Century France.

Answer: Cats' Eye

The Cat's Eye spectacle style first graced the faces of elegant women in the 1950s. Marilyn Monroe wore the style in public frequently as well as in the movie "Gentleman Prefer Blondes". Audrey Hepburn also favored the style both in and out of her movies. By the late 1980s, the style was considered dated and fell out of favor. In the 21st century the cat's eye style made a fashion comeback as celebrities like Julia Roberts, Dita Von Tesse and Emma Stone wore the style creating a vintage-inspired trend.

Cat's eye spectacles are purely a fashion accessory that describes the shape of the frame and can be used with any type lens or frame material. The elements of the style are an upswept edge at the temple. Often the frame is also elongated and narrowed to accentuate the image of the feline look. As a further homage to the elements of 1960s style the cat's eye eyeglass is often paired with a beehive or bouffant hairdo drawing attention to the wearer's face.

Answer: Myopia

The French inspired scissor glass became popular in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. The spectacles were mounted in twin round frames and secured by a "Y" shaped holder with a ring for wearing around the neck. The glasses replaced an earlier style of single lens glasses called the "quizzing glass". As with the example in the picture scissor-glasses were often ornate made from gold and encrusted with jewels and intricate designs. Leaders of the era such as George Washington and Napoleon used Scissor-glasses.

Unlike rivet glasses and other early vision correction devices scissor-glasses were intended to improve distance vision. Myopia or nearsightedness is the medical term for impairment in the eye that blurs the images of objects farther away from the subject. In contrast hyperopia or far-sightedness is the blurring of vision when viewing objects close to the subject. The scissor-glass was a hand-held vision enhancement that is more akin to a binocular or opera glass than a modern myopia correction lens.

Answer: John Lennon

Legendary Beatle John Lennon was severely nearsighted and required corrective spectacles to function. In the era before contact lens and laser eye surgery Lennon relied on his spectacles. Lennon was also a rock star and keenly conscious of his status as a pop culture icon. Lennon chose his spectacles carefully and wore a number of different styles over his lifetime.

However, Lennon often returned to and appeared frequently in the simple rounded wire glasses. As an example, Lennon is pictured wearing the round wire style on the album cover for his classic 1971 "Imagine" album.

Answer: Sam Foster

Colored lens eyeglasses were invented in London by James Ayscough, who in 1752 created green and blue-tinted lenses to reduce glare and improve the vision of people sensitive to bright light. For two centuries, only people with delicate eyes wore tinted lenses. The lenses were expensive and sold only by prescription. Sam Foster and Bill Grant founded Foster Grant, Inc. in 1919 to sell hair accessories. In 1929, the company abandoned hair products and began making affordable sunglasses. The glasses did not otherwise affect the user's vision and could be dispensed over-the-counter. Hollywood stars and the fashion elite were soon donning their "Foster Grants" and sunglasses became high fashion.

In 1937, Edwin Land his Polaroid Corporation began producing inexpensive tinted lens that "polarized" or filtered the harmful UV spectrum of light from the user. Polarized sunglasses further expanded the growing market for tinted lens in both corrected and uncorrected spectacles. Raymond Stegeman was the optical designer who patented the famous Ray Ban "Wayfarer" style of sunglass for Bausch-Lomb in the early 1950s, while James Richards introduced the Maui Jim line of sunglasses.

Answer: Created by an Englishman

Despite the fact that the lorgnette glass carry a French sounding name the eyeglass style was developed by Englishman George Adams circa 1770. Adams was an optician/scientist and was a well-known lens maker in London's fashionable Fleet Street. The lorgnette eyeglass first started to appear in numbers in the 1780s with long-handled glasses cleverly encased in finely carved cases. Around 1825, another Englishman Robert Bate introduced shorter handled lorgnettes that became popular.

Lorgnette glasses were made with corrective lenses to improve both distance and close vision. Often the handles and frames were made of precious metals and inlaid with jewels and intricate designs. As such only the wealthy could normally the spectacles. The handheld eyeglass style remained popular as a fashion accessory into the early 20th century.

Answer: Turning 2D flat screen images into perceived 3D images

Humans perceive images in three dimensions (height width and depth). Images on flat screens such as movie and television screens are shown using only the dimensions of height and width. In order for an otherwise flat movie screen to project images that have depth the human brain needs to be "tricked" into "seeing" differently. 3D imaging is a technique for creating the illusion of depth in an image by presenting two offset images separately to each eye. The brain then combines the two separate images into a single image of the object with depth.

The two most used techniques for creating a 3D illusion are the passive eyeglass, where the eyeglasses combine separate images from two offset sources, and the active eyeglass where the viewer wears eyeglasses to filter offset images from a single source separated to each eye.

Answer: bridge

The area where the two halves of the eyeglass meet at the nose is called the "bridge". One of the keys to improving eyeglasses was to remove the need to hold the spectacles in place. Rivet glasses had a sharp V bridge that did not stay on the nose without aid. The "C" bridge conformed better to the shape of the nose and was a significant improvement in holding the eyeglass in place.

The examples of "C" bridge spectacles in the picture on display in Wartburg Castle Germany and date from the late 16th Century. The use of the "C" bridge shape continues into modern eyewear. The 18th Century English inventor Edward Scarlett is credited with adding small pieces of metal to the sides of the eyeglass to hold the spectacle in place at the temple. American inventor Benjamin Franklin is credited for devising in 1784 the first bifocal eyewear that allowed a single frame to hold both near and far sight corrective lenses.

Answer: Eye ring

Technically any vision improvement device used in a single eye is a mono (singular) ocule (eye). However, for most people the "monocle" conjurers an image of a circular lens with a wire ring frame that can be attached to a string or wire. While monocles can be seen in use in the 18th Century, it is not until the Victorian periods of the 19th Century that the style became popular. Monocles were worn mostly by upper-class gentleman and came to symbolize the wealthy. As the monocle became more ornament than medical device, it earned the nickname of the "eye ring".

Monocles were so closely tied to the rampant capitalism of the late 19th Century that reformist U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt publicly denounced the monocle as the symbolic representation of the evil trusts and big businesses. In Germany, during the 1930s, wearing monocles became fashionable for high ranking members of the NAZI party further tarnishing the monocles image.

Answer: Pinched nose

Pince-nez glasses or "pinched nose" frames are a type of "C" bridge spectacle that use pressure on the nose to hold the glass frame in place. Pince-nez style glasses do not normally have hinges or ear pieces. While "pinching spectacles" first appear as early as the 15th Century, the Pince-nez reached its peak as a fashion trend during the late 19th Century. In contrast to the monocle, Pince-nez glasses were worn by aristocrats and commoners alike.

The picture shows different variants of Pince-nez spectacles. In addition to the original "C" bridge type, many Pince-nez type glasses used a hard bridge frame instead. The hard bridge secured the glass to the user by adding customized fitted nose pads.