Eyeglasses Still Beating the Opposition
It took humans centuries to develop eyeglasses the way we know them. Indeed the first wearable eyeglasses appeared in Italy during the 13th century. Though various sources suggest an earlier origin however it’s probably around 1285 that Salvino D’Armate invented eyeglasses and shared his invention with Allesandro della Spina who made it public. The first eyeglasses were made out of wooden, leather, or animal horn frames with glass-blown lenses and they were held before the face or rested on the nose. At first, eyeglasses were mostly used by monks and scholars, their demand increased significantly during the renaissance and after the invention of printing when books became accessible to everyone.
Nodaway, the development of new materials made eyeglasses more sophisticated and accessible to everyone around the world. Eyeglasses are still the number one means of vision correction, the others are contact lenses and laser refractive surgeries. Most eyeglasses’ wearers have more than one pair either for fashion and trend reasons or for the workplace and other sports activities. While people of all ages wear spectacles, contact lens wearers are mainly teens and young individuals. Patients operated with refractive surgeries can wear reading glasses and contacts at the age of presbyopia.
In Europe, according to the European Council of Optometry and Optics, 2020 Blue Book, 70% of individuals in Belgium and North Macedonia wear spectacles, and 20% of individuals in Estonia and Turkey wear spectacles. 50% of individuals in Romania and the Netherlands wear spectacles. The percentage of individuals who wear contact wearers is 10% in Belgium, 30% in North Macedonia, 10% in Estonia, 1.25% in Turkey, 2% in Romania, and 25% in the Netherlands.