Storiascopio · Era 8 of 12 · lower secondary year 1
Spectacles
about 1286 · Tuscany (perhaps Pisa)
In short
In a sermon given in Florence in 1306, the friar Giordano of Pisa said that the art of making spectacles had been invented less than twenty years earlier. So it is thought that the first spectacles were made in Tuscany, perhaps in Pisa, in the 1280s. They were two glass lenses set in small wooden or bone rings and joined by a pin, to be balanced on the nose. We do not know the inventor's name for certain.
Why it matters Spectacles allowed people with poor close-up sight to keep reading and working even in old age.
Source: University of Oxford, Cabinet, “Spectacles: technology unknown to the ancients, c. 1290”
Where we are in the era “Late Middle Ages”
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about 1050Event 18 of 251429
Your turn
Name ______________________ Class ______ Date __________
When did it happen? Find the date at the top and write it here:
Tell it in your own words: what happened?
Draw the scene below.
storiascopio.com/en/event/spectacles/ · free worksheet, you may photocopy it for your class