Monday, March 7, 2011

1896 Eye Protection

Green is popularly supposed to be the color which best protects the eye, but a German professor denies that it has any beneficial effects whatever, and declares that green newspapers, green glasses, and green umbrellas are all a mistake. His theory is, at all events, plausible. It is that each different color tires a different set of nerves and vision and, therefore, looking at one particular color saves one set of nerves at the expense of another. The best method, he points out, is to dim all the rays of light by smoked or gray glasses, which rest all the optic nerves.

The editor of the local Fowlerville newspaper put this information in the local news section. Once I read it, I became curious of when sunglasses were invented. A particularly informative website noted that some eye protection was in use as early at 1430 a.d. but that it really wasn't until the 20th century that the idea really took off. Sam Foster began marketing sunglasses in 1929 on the beaches of Atlantic City, New Jersey, and the fad caught on. It makes me wonder when the first pair of sunglasses showed up in Fowlerville.

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