By Dr Claire Turner
Our new temporary exhibition, You Choose, brings to light the many ways that medical technology can be personalised and made to measure. As part of our exhibition, we focus on glasses. Do you wear glasses? What do they look like? Did you choose the design? Glasses haven’t always looked so unique. In the past, glasses were produced ‘in bulk’, meaning hundreds of pairs of the same glasses with the same strength/prescription were manufactured and sold.
It wasn’t until the Georgian period that glasses became available in a wider range of designs. Jewellers were able to set lenses into fashionable frames that contained rare materials or were studded with precious stones. This development suggested that they were becoming increasingly popular and fashionable. However, in many ways, the range of options remained imprecise. Whereas today your glasses are made for you, in the past, they were made in batches of the same lens, or ‘prescription’. As such, consumers usually purchased glasses from a stock tradesman, who was able to give them glasses with a reasonably accurate optical power, but not specific to their individual needs. There was still some element of choice, much like when we purchase ready-made glasses from a pharmacy kiosk today, but the prescription was unlikely to be precise.
In the Victorian period, glasses were associated with wealth, beauty, and intellect. This led to a desire for people (including those who don’t need glasses!) to wear visual aids purely for aesthetic reasons. Glasses could be tailored for individual activities or occupations, indicating that they were not always necessarily manufactured for people with poor eyesight. For example, some eyeglasses were designed specifically for reading or drawing, while some were created for very precise audiences. Spectacles for travellers featured a layer of gauze around the sides to prevent dust and stones injuring their eyes, and special magnifying glasses were created for watchmakers and engravers. As part of our You Choose exhibition, we feature some of these fascinating and unique glasses.
Did you know you can wear glasses that contain hearing aids? Here at Thackray, we have several pairs of glasses designed to help people with trouble hearing as well as seeing, some of which are on display in our You Choose exhibition. Small hearing aids are attached or embedded into the arms of the glasses.
Are you fond of reading? Do you like to read in bed? How would you like a pair of glasses that allow you to do just that, but while laying down?
In the 1930s, Andrew McKie Reid designed the first ever pair of recumbent spectacles. They acted as a visual aid for people who spent a lot of time in bed, such as people with spinal injuries or chronic illnesses. These glasses contain a reflective prism that allows the wearer to see straight ahead despite laying on their back. At the time of their invention, recumbent spectacles were used primarily as a medical technology. They were aimed exclusively at bedbound patients. Nowadays, recumbent glasses can be purchased from retailers such as Amazon. While they are still used predominantly by people who are immobile, they are available to a much wider audience, including people who like to read while laid down!
In some ways, not much has changed between the Middle Ages, nineteenth century, and present day. Eyeglasses still have to fit a social body as much as a physical body: they have to be stylish, striking, and match the wearer’s personality. While people who are partially sighted are no longer stigmatised, the design and function of glasses remains important in discourse on disability and wearable technology. For some manufacturers and companies associated with the production of glasses, these objects resemble a prosthetic. Their ideas about the products they design and manufacture is based largely on multifunctionality and the product’s ability to attach to the individual and withstand that person’s mobility. For some, glasses even qualify as corporal, or ‘of the body’. Some people wear glasses for hours on end, and their identity is sometimes shaped by their use of glasses, such as not recognising someone when they take off their glasses! The introduction of contact lenses reinforces this viewpoint, in that visual aids can now be placed on the eye itself. So, what do you think? Are glasses a type of medical technology, an accessory, or even a prosthetic? What do your glasses mean to you? You choose!