A Brief History of Eyeglasses
眼镜的发展简史

Spectacular Inventions
伟大的发明

When you think about inventions that have radically changed human existence, what comes to mind? Probably the wheel, the printing press, maybe the refrigerator and definitely personal computers. Then there are those more mundane things that we rarely think about, but without which we’d be much worse off. Like eyeglasses, for example. Imagine a world without eyeglasses—many of us would walk around bumping into things and driving our cars up onto the sidewalk. So who invented glasses, and how were they first made?
若问你哪些发明从本质上改变了人类的生存状态，你会怎么说？答案或许是车轮、印刷机，也可能是冰箱甚至个人电脑。还有很多我们鲜少想到的平常之物，没了它们我们的生活将会一团糟。眼镜，就是其中之一。想像没有眼镜的生活－许多人走路嗑嗑绊绊，车辆开到了人行道上。那么，是谁发明了眼镜，眼镜最初是怎么来的呢？

The truth is that nobody knows who invented glasses. At some point in Italy between 1268 and 1289 someone came up with the idea, but the actual inventor remains anonymous. What we do know is that the earliest lenses were made from quartz and were usually set into bone, metal, or leather. As soon as early opticians figured out how to make glass without bubbles and other obstructions, they started making lenses out of glass.
其实没人知道到底是谁发明了眼镜。1268年至1289年间某个意大利人造就了它，但是这人姓甚名谁仍无人知晓。唯一知道的是最早的镜片由石英打造，镶嵌在骨头、金属或皮革上。眼镜商能制造出无气泡和其它问题的玻璃后，他们便开始用玻璃制作镜片了。

Ye Olde Nose Pinchers
古老的鼻夹
Although glasses spread quickly throughout Europe and Asia, there was one major problem: Keeping them on the wearer’s face. Early glasses acted a bit like pinchers, squeezed onto the bridge of the nose. Ouch! It took nearly 400 years before opticians figured out that rigid sidepieces resting on top of the ears might do the trick.
尽管眼镜迅速地在欧亚各地流行，但仍有一个很大的问题摆在面前：怎么让它戴在脸上。早期的方法有点像钳子的原理－把眼镜挤在鼻梁上。天了撸！直到400年后眼镜商才明白在两侧用支架固定在耳朵上才是解决问题的办法。

No history of spectacles would be complete without some mention of Benjamin Franklin, who invented bifocals in the 1780s. Annoyed at having to constantly switch glasses whenever he wanted to read or take in the sights while traveling, Franklin had his reading glasses cut in half and fused with his distance glasses. Now that’s American ingenuity for you.
不提到本杰明弗兰克林，眼镜的发展史就不算完整，1780年他发明了双光眼镜。起因是他对在阅读和旅途观赏风景时要更换眼镜感到懊恼，便把自己的老花镜一折为二，和远视镜焊接在一起。这就是美国人的奇思妙想。

came up with 提出，想出
quartz 石英
optician n. 眼镜商；光学仪器商；光学仪器制造者
rigid adj. 严格的；僵硬的，死板的
bifocal n. 双光眼镜；双重焦点透镜
ingenuity n. 心灵手巧，独创性；精巧