Search for spectacle makers in your region. What do you know about contacts they had with craftsmen from other region in Europe. Write a short essay about them.
One of the earliest pictorial evidence for the use of eyeglasses by Thomas da Modena (1325-1379):
"It's been reported that Seneca - the Roman statesman, dramatist, and philosopher (4 BC-65 AD) - used a glass globe filled with water as a magnifier to read "all the books of Rome." Around the year 1000, glass blowers in Italy are credited with producing reading stones made of solid glass. These devices were similar to hand-held magnifying lenses of today.
In the mid-13th century, English philosopher and scientist Roger Bacon reported on the use of reading lenses. It's unclear whether he was referring to reading stones or lenses in frames worn in front of the eyes, but he wrote in 1268: "If anyone examines letters or other minute objects through the medium of crystal or glass or other transparent substance, if it be shaped like the lesser segment of a sphere with the convex side toward the eye, he will see the letters far better and they will seem larger to him. For this reason, such an instrument is useful to all persons and to those with weak eyes for they can see any letter, however small, if magnified enough.
In 1306, Giordano da Rivalto - a monk in Pisa, Italy - remarked in a sermon, "it is not yet twenty years since the art of making spectacles, one of the most useful arts on earth, was discovered. I myself have seen and conversed with the man who made them first." But the name of the inventor was never mentioned. Rivalto coined the word occhiali (eyeglasses) and its use began to spread throughout Italy and Europe".
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