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A Brief History of Sunglasses

Let's face it, as long as man has existed the sun has been shining so from that we can assume that at time he has felt the need to do something other than squint!

Before the invention of glass, there had been optical devices using gemstones or quartz, Pliny tells us that the Roman Emperor Nero liked to watch gladiator fights with emeralds, but using them as mirrors.Quite why rather escapes me, perhaps he just liked the colour green.

An early description of covering the eyes for protection comes from China, where in the 12th centuary flat panes of smoky quartz, which offered no corrective powers but did protect the eyes from glare were used by judges in courts to conceal their facial expressions while questioning witnesses.

Once spectacles with correcting lenses became commonplace it wasn't long before the benefits of tinting the glass became apparent. In the 18th centuary James Ayscough began experimenting with tinted lenses in spectacles but these were not "sunglasses" as such. In fact Ayscough believed blue- or green-tinted glass could correct for specific vision impairments whilst protection from the sun's rays was not a concern of his.

Yellow/Amber and brown-tinted spectacles were also a commonly-prescribed item for people with syphilis in the 19th and early 20th centuries because of the sensitivity to light that was one of the symptoms of the disease.

Modern developments

In the early 1900s, sunglasses as we know then started to become more widely used, initially by many stars of the silent movies. The common belief is that this was to avoid recognition by fans, but the more likely reason was that the powerful arc lights that were in use due to the extremely slow speed film stocks. The use of sunglasses became ingrained and persisted long after improvements in film quality and the introduction of UV filters had eliminated this problem.

Development gathered pace after the first world war and the first mass-produced sunglasses were introduced in America by Sam Foster in 1929 to an eager public on the beaches of Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he began selling sunglasses under the name Foster Grant from a Woolworth's store on the Boardwalk.

The first polarised lenses in Sunglasses appeared in 1936, after Edwin H. Land developed his patented "Polaroid" filter.