Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. Robert, what kind of sunglasses do you wear? Well? Currently,
Speaker 1: my son is six years old, so I've been going
Speaker 1: through a spell here where I can really only wear
Speaker 1: whatever kind of semi garbage swag sunglasses come my way,
Speaker 1: you know, with various brand names plastered to the side
Speaker 1: of them, because inevitably, especially when he was younger, my
Speaker 1: son would have to get his hands on whatever kind
Speaker 1: of sunglasses I had in the car. So the sunglasses
Speaker 1: get smudged, sunglasses get scratched up, sunglasses get broken or
Speaker 1: just lost. And I was pretty good at losing sunglasses
Speaker 1: even before he came into my life. Uh So I'm
Speaker 1: hoping that I'm working up to very soon reaching that
Speaker 1: point where I can actually buy a decent pair of
Speaker 1: sunglasses that will protect my eyes. Did you ever actually
Speaker 1: where those company sunglasses we got, I have like like
Speaker 1: fold in half at the nose. Yeah, I got those immediately.
Speaker 1: But mainly I I thought to myself, this is a
Speaker 1: great decoy brand because my son is gonna love like
Speaker 1: the Transformer s qualities of these sunglasses here. Break that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I've ended up wearing them around anyway, So that's
Speaker 1: my story. Hopefully, by the time I'm ready to actually
Speaker 1: get some decent sunglasses, we'll have some like back to
Speaker 1: the future to sunglasses, you know, like the ones that
Speaker 1: you've got as a prize, uh Pizza Hut back in
Speaker 1: the day when that film first came out. Except now
Speaker 1: these will be legit future sunglasses. You know. I was
Speaker 1: trying to think before we decided to do this episode,
Speaker 1: our sunglasses an invention or not? Did they count? Yeah?
Speaker 1: They count? I guess everything is an invention. Were we
Speaker 1: born with sunglasses? Well we'll get into that, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it is difficult for us to imagine a time before sunglasses.
Speaker 1: How did Corey Hart keep track of the visions in
Speaker 1: his eyes? I don't know. How did rowdy Roddy Piper
Speaker 1: see through the alien conspiracy? I guess I don't know.
Speaker 1: He didn't how to terminate or cover up his eye damage.
Speaker 1: That's a good point, bro, Really, how did anyone ever
Speaker 1: in the history of Earth managed to look cool at
Speaker 1: any given moment, much less shade their eyes from the
Speaker 1: vicious light of day. It's already telling that all the
Speaker 1: examples you point to our cultural ones you're pointing, You're
Speaker 1: pointing to movies and stuff rather than talking about how
Speaker 1: would I get through my life without sunglasses? Well, that
Speaker 1: this is going to be an important part there, just
Speaker 1: the iconography of the sunglasses, and that will be more
Speaker 1: important later on in our discussion, but in their their
Speaker 1: psychological effects example that. But initially here you know, we're
Speaker 1: we're we're complicating the purpose of the sunglasses. Bye bye. Basically,
Speaker 1: the whole deal is the sun is bright. I disagree.
Speaker 1: And while our eyelids do give us the ability to
Speaker 1: manipulate the amount of sunlight hitting our eyeballs, it also
Speaker 1: pays to have other options. And certainly we have the
Speaker 1: ability to look away from the sun, to hide from
Speaker 1: the sun, or to raise a hand or forearm to
Speaker 1: block it. But that's dependent largely on say, your environment.
Speaker 1: Like some environments are much brighter than others. What if
Speaker 1: you live in a place where, say it's springtime and
Speaker 1: you're in a place with snow cover. The sun can
Speaker 1: be so bright in those cases because it's not only
Speaker 1: coming from above but reflecting off of the snow, that
Speaker 1: you essentially cannot use your eyes in the environment, right
Speaker 1: because otherwise you can't just shade where a hat you
Speaker 1: need to wear like a hat with two bills right,
Speaker 1: one on top, one at the bottom. Um, it's coming
Speaker 1: from all directions, and you need to use your hands
Speaker 1: for other things. You're an individual, will need to to
Speaker 1: hunt or fish or craft, etcetera. You can't just go
Speaker 1: around with your hands up all the time. Um. When
Speaker 1: I when I think about the challenges of dealing with sunlight,
Speaker 1: I'm always forced to just think about how amazing our
Speaker 1: eyelids are though for manipulating light well, and our iris is.
Speaker 1: Of course, our pupils contract when there's too much light,
Speaker 1: but there's a point at which they can't contract anymore,
Speaker 1: and you have to depend on the eyelids. One of
Speaker 1: one example I always go to is there's a character
Speaker 1: in Larry McMurtry's novel Comanche Moon and he he winds
Speaker 1: up tortured by bandit flares and they slice his eyelids off.
Speaker 1: They leave him for for dead in the sun, and he's,
Speaker 1: you know, half driven mad by the whole whole ordeal.
Speaker 1: But eyelids. Oh yeah. It is a It is a sick,
Speaker 1: weird book. Um, I love it. It's my favorite McMurtry book.
Speaker 1: But afterwards this character ends up constructing a pair of
Speaker 1: special sunglasses for himself with these varying um varying levels
Speaker 1: of darkness, so that he can just click through them
Speaker 1: as he needs them, depending on where he is, if
Speaker 1: he's a you know, indoors, outdoors, bright day, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: cloudy day, etcetera. But I always come back to that
Speaker 1: because it's like, Yeah, have you had to recreate the
Speaker 1: functionality of your eyelids? What kind of invention would you
Speaker 1: have to have to build? You've got so many parts
Speaker 1: of your body that you really don't appreciate but would
Speaker 1: if they were gone. But enough about Larry merturs cyborg westerns. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's let's just get down to sunglasses. Was what is
Speaker 1: essential to a modern pair of sunglasses? What do you
Speaker 1: What do you need is we're sort of deconstructing the
Speaker 1: the invention. Well, you need a frame to hold them
Speaker 1: over the eyes, and you need lenses that will, in
Speaker 1: one way or another filter the incoming light. They obviously
Speaker 1: can't be completely opaque. You need to be able to
Speaker 1: see through them, but they also need to stop some
Speaker 1: amount of bad stuff from getting in right, So, like
Speaker 1: from from a material level, it seems pretty straightforward. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, glass itself is a rather old invention. We
Speaker 1: could and we can revisit glass at some point in
Speaker 1: a future episode. But you find examples of this an
Speaker 1: ancient Mesopotamia. Uh. Certainly crystals and other substances were known
Speaker 1: to ancient people. So just the materials of say, building
Speaker 1: something out of six, we can all imagine this of
Speaker 1: flint stones style UH, spectacles or sunglasses that one could
Speaker 1: conceivably have. But invention is always about that moment where
Speaker 1: someone actually puts materials together and and create something that
Speaker 1: has not existed before. So we're forced to just to
Speaker 1: ask that question, well, where do we really see the
Speaker 1: earliest indications of UH to all to a certain extent, spectacles,
Speaker 1: We can't talk about sunglasses without talking about spectacles a
Speaker 1: little bit. But we're mostly concerned with sunglasses in this
Speaker 1: episode because they look cooler right focusing lenses. That that's
Speaker 1: the story for another time, where I think we're dealing
Speaker 1: with a somewhat simpler story right now. Yes, even though
Speaker 1: sunglasses might not have become extremely popular around the world
Speaker 1: until after spectacles were widely used. But it's really too
Speaker 1: bad because they're they're they're sunglasses esfecially are modern usage
Speaker 1: of them. They're they're they're really important, they really protect us. Well,
Speaker 1: think about the sunglasses you wear as a kind of
Speaker 1: radiation suit for your eyes. I think on that one
Speaker 1: for a second. Try try to act, actually cognize the
Speaker 1: fact that good old fashioned sunlight is literally radiation from
Speaker 1: a star. That's a phrase that always echoes in my
Speaker 1: mind when it's really beaten down on my head um.
Speaker 1: And a good pair of sunglasses should do multiple things, right.
Speaker 1: They should decrease the intensity of the light reaching your eyes.
Speaker 1: So if it's a bright, shining day, or there's glare
Speaker 1: off of water or off of a reflective surface or something,
Speaker 1: you need light to reach your eyes in order to see,
Speaker 1: but you don't need so much of it. And when
Speaker 1: the number of lumens in your surroundings exceed what your
Speaker 1: eyes need in order to see, your iris muscles contract.
Speaker 1: They shrink your pupil, the shutter of your eye, and
Speaker 1: that admits less in But eventually your pupils can't contract anymore,
Speaker 1: and then you have to try to limit more light
Speaker 1: by squinting your eyelids. But eventually you run into problems there. Right,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's so bright that squinting becomes difficult, or you know,
Speaker 1: you you you're squinting so much you want to completely
Speaker 1: close your eyes. Now, the other thing that's important for
Speaker 1: sunglasses to do is decrease or eliminate ultra violet radiation
Speaker 1: when when that's coming at your eyes. Now, there's really
Speaker 1: no benefit to getting ultra violet radiation in your eyes.
Speaker 1: Whereas you need the visible light that comes in from
Speaker 1: the sun in order to see your surroundings, you don't
Speaker 1: really need UV light at all. And so if sunglasses
Speaker 1: can reduce or even completely eliminate UV exposure to your eyes,
Speaker 1: that's a good thing, because your eyes can be injured
Speaker 1: by U V exposure. But as we were saying earlier,
Speaker 1: also let's not ignore the fact that sunglasses are a
Speaker 1: very profound style choice and play a psychological and cultural
Speaker 1: role as well. I think people often wear sunglasses as
Speaker 1: much for style and psychological reasons as they do for uh,
Speaker 1: for reducing glare and reducing UV exposure. In any event,
Speaker 1: you're gonna want a good pair of sunglasses before you
Speaker 1: go out to say a sporting event, right for a
Speaker 1: number of reasons, because it's your your outdoors, and it
Speaker 1: may be very bright. Uh. And then it's also a
Speaker 1: social engagement. You know, you wanna look cool uh to
Speaker 1: the other fans or they're friends and family that have
Speaker 1: traveled there with you. In the case of the dude,
Speaker 1: you can't go bowling without sunglasses exactly. Uh. So for
Speaker 1: our first historical journey, in our attempt to understand sunglasses
Speaker 1: of old, let's go back to the ancient Romans. Let's
Speaker 1: go to the Colosseum. Now, this, I think is actually
Speaker 1: going to be a false example, but it's something that's
Speaker 1: interesting that sometimes gets cited in this context. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna go to our old friend Plenty of the Elder
Speaker 1: first century CE Roman writer in his Natural History translated
Speaker 1: by John Bostock, Plenty is discussing in in book thirty
Speaker 1: seven of his Natural History quote the natural history of
Speaker 1: precious Stones, and he comes to a section on what
Speaker 1: he calls smaragdes I could have sworn that was one
Speaker 1: of the one of the raith kings in the Lord
Speaker 1: of the Rings uh saga. But I don't think so.
Speaker 1: Which anniversary gift is smar agnes I can never remember?
Speaker 1: It's like it's like wood, but ivory smaragdes right. So
Speaker 1: samur agnes appears to be a term used for green
Speaker 1: precious stones, for barrel stones like emerald, or for jasper stones.
Speaker 1: Uh and he so he seems to be talking about emeralds.
Speaker 1: I think that's the way it's most often translated. And
Speaker 1: plenty dwells for a while on how beautiful the emerald
Speaker 1: is and how RESTful to the eye, how soothing to
Speaker 1: look upon. Quote, even when the vision has been fatigued
Speaker 1: with intently viewing other objects, it is refreshed by being
Speaker 1: turned upon this stone. And lapidaries know of nothing that
Speaker 1: is more gratefully soothing to the eyes. It's soft green
Speaker 1: tints being wonderfully adapted for assuaging lassitude when felt in
Speaker 1: those organs, by those organs, I think he means eyes.
Speaker 1: But anyway, getting to to the part that's often cited
Speaker 1: as as emerald sunglasses, but actually it appears to not be,
Speaker 1: he writes. Quote. When the surface of the samur agnes
Speaker 1: is flat, it reflects the image of objects in the
Speaker 1: same manner as a mirror. The Emperor Nero used to
Speaker 1: you the combats of the gladiators upon a Smaragdus upon
Speaker 1: a Smaragdus being key here perhaps right. So this would
Speaker 1: have been the first century CE, and it's been cited
Speaker 1: as an early use of tinted transparencies in the sun.
Speaker 1: The idea that Nero was maybe watching the net fighters
Speaker 1: and the pursuers the secutors through Gym's like lenses. So
Speaker 1: just I guess try to imagine he's holding emeralds over
Speaker 1: his eyes and looking through them like lenses to filter
Speaker 1: out some of the glare. I think I also saw
Speaker 1: an artistic interpretation of this where you see the you know,
Speaker 1: the the portly emperor. They're all in his finery and
Speaker 1: he's holding up something that looks like it's almost like
Speaker 1: opera uh, binoculars, you know, except it's just one emerald
Speaker 1: that he's holding up to his eye. I'm thinking with
Speaker 1: the green and that image you're describing, this has got
Speaker 1: to be the inspiration for David Lynch's depiction of Baron
Speaker 1: Harconan in his adaptation of Dune. Oh does he have
Speaker 1: an emerald? Well, everything's green around. It's like his his
Speaker 1: rooms are green. He's got this green environment. He's kind
Speaker 1: of a Nero like figure. But anyway, the reason I
Speaker 1: said this was a false choices because it sounds to
Speaker 1: me like in the context, Plenty meant that Nero, if
Speaker 1: this story is even true, watched the fights as reflected
Speaker 1: in the surface of the sami Agnodus like a mirror,
Speaker 1: because he was just talking about how it reflects like
Speaker 1: a mirror, and this would still have probably some some
Speaker 1: like sun dampening effect, right. I just try to imagine
Speaker 1: something reflected an emerald. It's not going to be reflected
Speaker 1: in a blinding way, but so he's looking at that
Speaker 1: since the emerald reflects less light than the source provides.
Speaker 1: I was looking at a text titled The Origin and
Speaker 1: Development of Spectacles by C. J. S. Thompson, and this
Speaker 1: is an older Texas Is from n seven, but he
Speaker 1: also mentions the Nero story, and he definitely argued too
Speaker 1: that it was probably a case where Nero just liked
Speaker 1: to watch the festivities colored green um which you know
Speaker 1: via the emerald, and that he gained no sun shading
Speaker 1: from it. And yeah, I think my suspicion here is
Speaker 1: that based on some recent research we did for stuff
Speaker 1: to build your mind about gladiatorial combat was for our
Speaker 1: episode on the trident Um, you know there there was.
Speaker 1: If you're a fan of both the sort of the
Speaker 1: sporting combat of of the gladiatorial spectacle as well as
Speaker 1: like the drama and all these other ridiculous aspects of it,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be you might you might gain something from
Speaker 1: looking out at this combat between men dressed as fish
Speaker 1: men using nautical weapons, and then adding a green overlay
Speaker 1: on that. Um, I could see where where the green
Speaker 1: tint could perhaps be be helpful in that that particular
Speaker 1: mode of entertainment. What you're saying is taking on a
Speaker 1: decidedly Lynchian vibe. I I think, I think the connection
Speaker 1: is there now. Thompson also points out that while the
Speaker 1: Romans certainly suffered from eye problems and had their own
Speaker 1: treatments for those ailments, there's no mention in the work
Speaker 1: of say Celsus, of artificial site aids. He mentions that
Speaker 1: in writings prior to the thirteenth century, one finds only
Speaker 1: occasional mentions of magnifying classes. So the use of some
Speaker 1: sort of a lens to uh look at find our
Speaker 1: details or perhaps you know, holding it up to a text,
Speaker 1: but uh, you don't see mention of spectacles. By the way,
Speaker 1: he also wrote that there was no evidence that lenses
Speaker 1: were known to the ancient Egyptians or the Hebrews. However,
Speaker 1: we do have a very early magnifying glass, or depending
Speaker 1: on who you ask, perhaps a fire starting glass, something
Speaker 1: that you used to refract the rays of the sun,
Speaker 1: you know, to start a small fire, you know, the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that children may sometimes do when trying
Speaker 1: to burn ants, hopefully not to ants, hopefully not. I mean,
Speaker 1: and you know one has to be careful. But at
Speaker 1: any rate, this particular lens, the Nimrud lens, is a
Speaker 1: three thousand year old crystal unearthed in eighteen fifty by
Speaker 1: Austin Henry layered in the Syrian palace of Nimrod. However,
Speaker 1: we were also not sure. It might have simply been
Speaker 1: a decorative element. It might not have been used. Uh
Speaker 1: and in any rate, it's not tinted. Okay, so we're
Speaker 1: not talking about sunglasses, right, but we are talking about
Speaker 1: like a crystal that may have been that people may
Speaker 1: have looked through. Now you have to ask you the question, like,
Speaker 1: to what extent did they just look through it because
Speaker 1: it was cool? Like what's more mystical than holding up
Speaker 1: some sort of you know, gleaming crystal even if it's clear,
Speaker 1: and watching how the world is distorted ever so slightly. Now,
Speaker 1: another thing that's worth noting is that we've been talking
Speaker 1: about lenses and tinted lenses, but obviously people came up
Speaker 1: with ways of protecting their eyes from the sun, uh
Speaker 1: having accessories beyond just their hands and their eyelids and
Speaker 1: stuff to protect their eyes from the sun long before
Speaker 1: there were there were tinted glass or plastic lenses or anything,
Speaker 1: for example, hats and umbrellas. That's obvious, yeah, But a
Speaker 1: much more ingenious and much more interesting one is what
Speaker 1: I want to mention the Inuit, and you pick people's
Speaker 1: of the northern circumpolar regions today Canada, Alaska, Greenland and
Speaker 1: Russia have for centuries made these ingenious devices known as
Speaker 1: snow goggles. Yes, and and I want to come back
Speaker 1: to what we said earlier about lumens before we get
Speaker 1: into this, because I think this really drives home the
Speaker 1: necessity that led to the invention. Uh So, in an
Speaker 1: indoor environment, a human is typically typically going to encounter
Speaker 1: four hundred six hundred lumens. That's the intensity of the
Speaker 1: light um and our comfortable level four loomens. It's it's
Speaker 1: gonna go up to round thirty five hundred. If you're
Speaker 1: in the shade on a sunny day, you're probably encountering
Speaker 1: around a thousand lumens sunny day out on say a
Speaker 1: highway or other reflective surface. You know, we all know
Speaker 1: what it's like to drive on like a really sunny day.
Speaker 1: You almost have to have shades. Uh, you're probably gonna
Speaker 1: do with something like six thousand or more lumens. Uh.
Speaker 1: Ten thousand lumens is the danger zone where you really
Speaker 1: have to start worrying about the health of your eyes.
Speaker 1: But a snow field on a sunny day, you're talking
Speaker 1: twelve thousand plus lumens. And this is where you enter
Speaker 1: the domain of potential snow blindness. Right. And this is
Speaker 1: of course because of the reflective power of white snow. Right,
Speaker 1: it can create almost a kind of double sun effect,
Speaker 1: sun above and sun below being reflected back up. Whereas
Speaker 1: you know, a normal patch of ground that's got say
Speaker 1: grass or just open soil, might reflect about ten of
Speaker 1: the UV ray is coming from the sun. Snow can
Speaker 1: reflect not quite a hundred percent, but something like close
Speaker 1: to ad of it. Nearly doubling your UV exposure. And
Speaker 1: so if you are, say living in in northern regions
Speaker 1: where there's a lot of snow cover, one thing that
Speaker 1: works in your favor is that for much of the year,
Speaker 1: the sun doesn't get super bright, right, it doesn't get
Speaker 1: super high in the sky, doesn't get super direct, but
Speaker 1: it will in certain parts of the year where there
Speaker 1: is still a lot of snow cover on the ground.
Speaker 1: So when you've got those things working together, say bright sun,
Speaker 1: heavy snow cover, maybe in the springtime when the sun
Speaker 1: is out high in the sky, proper eye protection is
Speaker 1: incredibly important. And not just because it's difficult to hunt
Speaker 1: or see where you're going when the sun's reflecting off
Speaker 1: the white snow and there's blinding glare and everything, but
Speaker 1: it's what you mentioned. There's this risk of snow blindness,
Speaker 1: which is also known as a photocarrotitis. So, as we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, part of natural sunlight is ultra violet radiation,
Speaker 1: and ultra violet radiation can damage the cornea. It can
Speaker 1: damage the conjunctiva, the outer surfaces of the eye, just
Speaker 1: like it can damage the skin. And this is why
Speaker 1: photocarrotitis is often described as something like quote sunburn of
Speaker 1: the eye. Symptoms include pain and feeling of having like
Speaker 1: irritants or foreign bodies lodged in the eye, tearing up,
Speaker 1: swelling and redness, light sensitivity, and sometimes even truly temporary
Speaker 1: loss of vision. That's where the blindness comes from. And
Speaker 1: so if you need to be doing stuff out in
Speaker 1: the snow where the sun is bright, this this is
Speaker 1: going to be a problem. And snow goggles fight this
Speaker 1: problem with a very smart design. They're typically a carved frame,
Speaker 1: usually made from animal bone or walrus tusks, sometimes from driftwood,
Speaker 1: or sometimes even from like strange materials like I saw
Speaker 1: one that I think was from baleen from a whale,
Speaker 1: and uh. This frame fits tight over the eyes so
Speaker 1: that light doesn't get in on the sides or the top,
Speaker 1: and then light is allowed to enter through two very wide,
Speaker 1: very narrow slots carved in the middle of the goggles,
Speaker 1: which are sometimes darkened on the inside with a material
Speaker 1: like soot. And these narrow slits allow the person wearing
Speaker 1: them to see without exposing their eyes to too much
Speaker 1: glare or UV radiation. And some alternate versions also have
Speaker 1: have multiple slits more like like shutter shades or Venetian
Speaker 1: blinds or something. They're not unlike the sort of novelty
Speaker 1: plastic nineteen eighties sunglasses. You know where they were where
Speaker 1: you just had you had no glass, no linbs, shutters
Speaker 1: these slits, yes, so shutter shapes which. Yeah, you look
Speaker 1: at the especially the nineteen eighties versions of the is
Speaker 1: and it's easy to just think this is ridiculous. This
Speaker 1: is the this is the sunglasses. This is I wear
Speaker 1: is a purely decorative element, and to a certain extent
Speaker 1: is true. But they do have a certain functionality as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in many ways highly effective functionality. I mean this,
Speaker 1: if you don't have tinted glass to work with, this
Speaker 1: is a genius design. Yeah, and and the necessity that
Speaker 1: led to it, like like this would this would be
Speaker 1: the kind of environment that would necessitate sunglasses UM in
Speaker 1: a way that other parts of the world did not.
Speaker 1: All Right, Well, on that note, let's take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we'll discuss some more curios
Speaker 1: from the UH the history of invention UH in regards
Speaker 1: to the sunglasses. Alright, we're back now. Another frequently sided
Speaker 1: example of of sunglasses or early sunglasses used UH and
Speaker 1: involved them not being used to protect against the sun
Speaker 1: or perhaps any any way affect vision, but that they
Speaker 1: were allegedly used just to hide your eyes from others.
Speaker 1: This is this is a crucially important part of sunglasses.
Speaker 1: You could not ignore it. I mean, think of all
Speaker 1: the times you've worn sunglasses, and there are times where
Speaker 1: you wear them to protect your eyes. There are times
Speaker 1: when you wear them to to see better than high
Speaker 1: a light intensive environment. There are times when you do
Speaker 1: it to look cool. But there are times when say
Speaker 1: I've I've warned them, for instance on the train before uh,
Speaker 1: even when the train is underground, because it kind of
Speaker 1: makes me a little invisible. If I have my sunglasses on,
Speaker 1: my my earbuds in, then I am like less visibly present. Well, you,
Speaker 1: it means you can look around the world around you
Speaker 1: without ever unequivocally being caught looking at someone or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a natural human tendency to want to look around
Speaker 1: and see who's around you. Like, if you get caught
Speaker 1: looking at somebody, that's always awkward, especially if you've got
Speaker 1: some kind of social anxiety. You don't you don't want
Speaker 1: to like make that eye contact and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: we just both looked at each other at the same time, right,
Speaker 1: And if you're on the train, sometimes you need to
Speaker 1: look at the weird person on the train. And if
Speaker 1: you're not wearing sunglasses and you're doing this, that weird
Speaker 1: person might be you. It's it's just a great solution
Speaker 1: for everybody involved. So multiple sources report that Chinese judges
Speaker 1: wore smokey courts glasses to hide their eye expressions from
Speaker 1: the court during the thirteenth century, so this would have
Speaker 1: been during the Song Dynasty through twelve seventy nine. So
Speaker 1: it's looking around a little bit about this, and Harvard's
Speaker 1: came in to wrote the following in nineteen thirty six
Speaker 1: in the Introduction of Spectacles into China, which which deals
Speaker 1: you know, in large part was just spectacles in general.
Speaker 1: And if we come back and discuss spectacles on the
Speaker 1: show specifically, will probably return to this. And another source
Speaker 1: is but he cites Chinese writings that indicated that quote.
Speaker 1: Under the Song Dynasty, judges in deciding cases in the
Speaker 1: court used rock crystal or courts to read illegible legal
Speaker 1: documents in the sun. So here the idea seems to
Speaker 1: be that they were using them for magnification instead or
Speaker 1: perhaps in addition to um shielding their eyes from other
Speaker 1: people at the court. Well it it specifies in the sun,
Speaker 1: so that would seem to make it sound like they
Speaker 1: were trying to shield their eyes from from glare perhaps,
Speaker 1: So yeah, this one. This leaves me confused though as
Speaker 1: to like what was actually going on or was it
Speaker 1: a case where, for instance, these spectacles were arranged for
Speaker 1: reading in the sun or for some sort of magnification purpose,
Speaker 1: But then they realized, oh wait, these also shield our
Speaker 1: eyes and it makes a judging a little easier. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: you can absolutely see how sunglasses would and we'll get
Speaker 1: more into the psychological effects lay or on, but you
Speaker 1: can see how sunglasses would be helpful if you were
Speaker 1: trying to give the appearance of impartiality. You know, right,
Speaker 1: if you're a judge, you want to hide any sign
Speaker 1: of your face showing emotion and reaction to arguments or
Speaker 1: something like that. I'm not sure that's the reasoning here,
Speaker 1: but you can see how it could be right and
Speaker 1: you still remain you still retain a portion of your
Speaker 1: humanity in a way that you wouldn't if you were
Speaker 1: wearing say a hood or an iron mask or some
Speaker 1: other u covering for your face. Now. I looked at
Speaker 1: another text, Old Chinese Spectacles by Auto Durham Rasmussen, and
Speaker 1: there's a discussion of methods used to grind quote, crystal
Speaker 1: smoky courts in a variety of rose quarts into lenses.
Speaker 1: And apparently Marco Polo reported Chinese lenses in twelve seventy
Speaker 1: stating that people use lenses of quarts or semi precious
Speaker 1: stones to aid their site. Okay, but here we're still
Speaker 1: talking about not just like casual usage among the people,
Speaker 1: not fast and usage, but like specialized cases and in
Speaker 1: some cases seeming to be some kind of magnifier or
Speaker 1: site aid, right yeah, and definitely like a premium item
Speaker 1: that would be used by a specialist. And in fact
Speaker 1: it does seem that also in like Europe, in the
Speaker 1: United States, tinted glasses did exist some in the past
Speaker 1: few centuries, but they were not widely used and certainly
Speaker 1: not outside some kind of corrective or medical context or
Speaker 1: specialized research context until the twentieth century. Right yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: some classes have become such a fashion symbol it is
Speaker 1: easy to forget the necessity of them, even if we're
Speaker 1: not dealing with just the basic ideas of oh, it's
Speaker 1: like a super bright day, or you're in the middle
Speaker 1: of a of a snow field. Because tinted lenses can
Speaker 1: assist people with low vision, and they're often prescribed to
Speaker 1: people with ocular diseases such as age related macular degeneration,
Speaker 1: retinitis pigmentosa, cataract, retinopathy, cone dystrophy, and oculo cutaneous albinism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've also seen references to tinted lenses being recommended for, say,
Speaker 1: people who were undergoing some of the symptoms of syphilis
Speaker 1: or something like that, which makes me wonder if there's
Speaker 1: a connection with I have to go to a movie
Speaker 1: in in Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula, where Gary Oldman is Dracula.
Speaker 1: Where's those tinted lenses in the I guess that's supposed
Speaker 1: to be the nineteenth century in England. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: as I've I've ever read before. There are theories, and
Speaker 1: this is again just a theory that that brom Stoker
Speaker 1: could have had syphilis and that might have on some
Speaker 1: level informed his writing of Dracula. I don't remember him
Speaker 1: mentioning tinted spectacles in the book, did he? I do
Speaker 1: not recall that being a detail of the book, but
Speaker 1: it's definitely there in that movie. Anyway. It's it's interesting,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting choice. Whyever Coppola did it um. But
Speaker 1: for modern sunglasses, it's hard to say that they were
Speaker 1: actually exactly in nted at any particular time, because we
Speaker 1: as we mentioned, various kinds of shaded or tinted lenses
Speaker 1: had existed for a while for various specialized uses. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until the nineteen twenties I think, really when commercial
Speaker 1: sunglasses and tinted goggles for driving often really became popular,
Speaker 1: and then especially it seems in the nineteen thirties when
Speaker 1: commercially produced sunglasses became popular in the in the United
Speaker 1: States due to there being a fashion item worn by
Speaker 1: the rich and the glamorous. Now, if we want to
Speaker 1: focus briefly on the idea of how sunglasses actually work,
Speaker 1: I feel like you can. You can take a couple
Speaker 1: of approaches here. You can go the very simple route,
Speaker 1: or you can go the incredibly tedious route. Right, And
Speaker 1: how do we how do we avoid those two? Well
Speaker 1: we can. I think what we'll do is we'll try
Speaker 1: to We'll try and hit the high notes here and
Speaker 1: and just remind everybody if you want a more in
Speaker 1: depth discussion of how sunglasses work, there's actually a how
Speaker 1: stuff works article, How sunglasses work. Oddly enough, that's the
Speaker 1: title of the article. That's a pretty good one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a pretty it is a pretty good one.
Speaker 1: It takes you through a lot of the more optical details,
Speaker 1: like essentially to really understand how sunglasses work, you needed
Speaker 1: like a full refresher on how light works. And that's
Speaker 1: what this article provides. And that's what we do not
Speaker 1: have time to provide here today. But we talked about
Speaker 1: lumens already, and we've talked about just basically how sunglasses
Speaker 1: modify incoming light to your eyes. Now, there are different
Speaker 1: ways that different types of sunglasses do that, right. Modern
Speaker 1: sunglasses especially depend on a number of different methods. There's tinting, polarization,
Speaker 1: photochromic lenses, there's mirror mirroring, scratch resistant coding, anti reflective coding,
Speaker 1: and UV coding. Tinting, though, is largely what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here, uh, and it's certainly key to the older
Speaker 1: methods of lens based shades. Gray tint is generally popular
Speaker 1: because gray tint reduces the overall amount of brightness with
Speaker 1: the least amount of color distortion. Because this is this
Speaker 1: is actually a really interesting thing to to read up on,
Speaker 1: because when you think about the color of shades, it's
Speaker 1: easy to just think that it's just purely, you know,
Speaker 1: a fashion choice. Am I gonna have brown? Am I
Speaker 1: gonna maybe a mood choice? Like? Are you nero? And
Speaker 1: you want to see the gladiator fights in green because
Speaker 1: you like green? Yeah? Maybe I like rose rose tinted glasses.
Speaker 1: There's actually and now I'm remembering that I have been
Speaker 1: into various New Age stores where they sell um glasses
Speaker 1: that are tinted with and they come with like documentation
Speaker 1: to tell you about how this particular tinant will affect
Speaker 1: your mood. Oh like in a like a magic stone
Speaker 1: power kind of way, like it has the powers of
Speaker 1: the supposed powers of these crystals embedded in the glass.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, there's definitely a new Age crystal vibe to it.
Speaker 1: But also I think maybe there's a they were incorporating
Speaker 1: a little bit of color theory as well. How do
Speaker 1: I get diamond sunglasses? I just want to look through
Speaker 1: dark diamonds. I want to say that um, the dark
Speaker 1: crystal McDuck has those really maybe, but well, I want
Speaker 1: to say the there is like a like, apart from
Speaker 1: the cartoon that showed when it played all the clips
Speaker 1: at the beginning that he had like diamonds stuck in
Speaker 1: his eyes. That's what I'm thinking of, Okay, but I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want diamonds stuck in your eyes. That'd be pointy. Um.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the take home here is that, uh, different color,
Speaker 1: different tinted lenses do different things. They interact with light
Speaker 1: in different ways. So again, gray um is not going
Speaker 1: to really distort color all that much. Meanwhile, yellow or
Speaker 1: gold tents reduce the amount of blue light while allowing
Speaker 1: a larger percentage of other frequencies through. But they can
Speaker 1: also create a kind of glare known as blue haze. Uh.
Speaker 1: The yellow tint virtually eliminates the blue part of the
Speaker 1: spectrum and has the effect of making everything bright and sharp.
Speaker 1: Amber and brownish tints reduced glare, and they have molecules
Speaker 1: that absorb higher frequency colors such as blue. In addition
Speaker 1: to UV rays, green tints on lenses filter some blue
Speaker 1: light in reduced glare, and they offer the highest contrast
Speaker 1: and greatest visual acuity. I guess that's the thing we
Speaker 1: hadn't mentioned much already, is that certain types of light
Speaker 1: filtering could actually sharpen images and reduced blur, such as
Speaker 1: at the gladiatorial uh Comba. You know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if that worked. Well, No, that makes me think. You know,
Speaker 1: there are these stories from the past of people going
Speaker 1: to the movie theaters with sunglasses on. Right, you'd go
Speaker 1: sit in the movies and watch through sunglasses. I wonder
Speaker 1: if some people were trying to see a sharper image somehow. Now,
Speaker 1: the oldest method of tending to depends on constant density.
Speaker 1: Now what does that mean? So this is a uniform
Speaker 1: tinting throughout the lens. Nowadays, we'd have to wear those
Speaker 1: shades over the uncomfortable three D glasses that were already wearing. Right,
Speaker 1: Let's say you're heading up a chain gang. That's Scott
Speaker 1: Luke in it. Oh yeah, you're talking about old cool
Speaker 1: hand Luke and the man with no eyes that that
Speaker 1: chain gang guard where he's always wearing those those perfectly
Speaker 1: mirrored shades and just seem to have no soul exactly.
Speaker 1: Or at the other end of the spectrum, let's say
Speaker 1: you're just trying to look super cool. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are so many reasons people wear sunglasses that don't have
Speaker 1: that much to do with blocking out the sunlight. Sunglasses,
Speaker 1: I think have a profound psychological and cultural impact, and
Speaker 1: we should talk about that when we come back. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back, So we're talking about the legacy of sunglasses
Speaker 1: of what are they doing psychologically and culturally. Now, one
Speaker 1: thing is that human behavior and self image pretty clearly
Speaker 1: are influenced by some interplay between our ongoing senses of
Speaker 1: seeing and being seen. Right at any given time, you're
Speaker 1: potentially seeing something and you're potentially being seen, and how
Speaker 1: you feel about those things is going to affect your confidence,
Speaker 1: your relation to other people, maybe your generosity. As just
Speaker 1: one strange example, just just think about all the ways
Speaker 1: that things feel different if you're viewing them comply through
Speaker 1: some kind of barrier or screen, Like the way that
Speaker 1: your relationship to the world changes when you're looking at
Speaker 1: that world through a car windshield, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: How being being inside a car looking out at the
Speaker 1: world fundamentally changes how you think about that world as
Speaker 1: opposed to being in the exact same place but not
Speaker 1: looking through the glass of a windshield. Yeah, Like, it's
Speaker 1: an entirely different scenario if you're just say, um, you know,
Speaker 1: at a summer camp, just walking through the woods. But
Speaker 1: then if you're wearing a hockey mask while doing so,
Speaker 1: it changes everything. Well, no, it really does, I mean,
Speaker 1: And it's not just the act of say, stalking through
Speaker 1: the woods or the act of driving. It also seems
Speaker 1: to be something about that barrier. And likewise, sunglasses can
Speaker 1: be a kind of shield or barrier or blind that
Speaker 1: has psychological effects on the person wearing them in the
Speaker 1: person they interact with. Think again of the Chinese courtroom example.
Speaker 1: You could see in a maybe in a maybe well
Speaker 1: meaning or benevolent way, that a judge hiding or face
Speaker 1: could be a way to try to show impartiality or neutrality,
Speaker 1: not show emotional reactions to arguments or statements or evidence.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, you could say that the judge
Speaker 1: covering their face could be some kind of power move, right,
Speaker 1: you know, the judge says you will not have access
Speaker 1: to my humanity. I will look upon you, but you
Speaker 1: will not look upon me. And even though they're not
Speaker 1: technically the judge that you know, we do see this
Speaker 1: with our our our law enforcement figures right, and those
Speaker 1: chain gang figures like the man with no eyes or
Speaker 1: the clearly the cool ham Luke inspired character in the
Speaker 1: Cohen Brothers. Oh brother where art thou of where you
Speaker 1: often see like fire reflected in his dark shades, but
Speaker 1: never his eyes. And there is actually research on the
Speaker 1: effects of sunglasses on human behavior. Yeah, I was looking
Speaker 1: at a two thousand ten University of Toronto study that
Speaker 1: found that people wearing sunglasses were less generous. Now, this
Speaker 1: was via a very small experiment in which participants were
Speaker 1: given a small amount of money to divvy up between
Speaker 1: themselves in another individual and um and and you know,
Speaker 1: they found that if you were wearing the sunglasses, you
Speaker 1: were a little stingier with the money. In a way,
Speaker 1: It's like they could see less of of you and
Speaker 1: therefore there was less to be lost in uh in
Speaker 1: in in dishing out less money. Well, it's this feeling
Speaker 1: of being inside and being disconnected. I think that has
Speaker 1: something to do with that. I mean, it's the same
Speaker 1: way that you are much I mean, maybe not you,
Speaker 1: but I would suspect you, like most people are just
Speaker 1: less generous when thinking about the people around you. When
Speaker 1: you're in a car. You ever noticed how like if
Speaker 1: you if you were walking past somebody on the sidewalk
Speaker 1: and they got in your way, you wouldn't you wouldn't
Speaker 1: be like, what's wrong with you? You? You know, get
Speaker 1: out of my way. But people in cars say stuff
Speaker 1: like that all the time. I think it has something
Speaker 1: to do with like looking out through that screen on
Speaker 1: the world. It creates this barrier that undercuts your generosity
Speaker 1: and connection with other people outside as humans and turns
Speaker 1: them more into a like obstacle stimuli. Yeah. Now, and
Speaker 1: another thing which you mention is that this study does
Speaker 1: follow in the tradition of Philippa Zimbardo's famous Stanford prison experiment,
Speaker 1: which show it's easy to forget because this is like
Speaker 1: the less powerful detail of that study. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I think I have read that there there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who look back on that study and think,
Speaker 1: you know, we shouldn't draw too many conclusions from it.
Speaker 1: I think I don't remember exactly what the criticisms are now,
Speaker 1: but I think it it is. It has been critically reappraised, right,
Speaker 1: it is. It is a study that was that it
Speaker 1: certainly has a has a long legacy onto itself. A
Speaker 1: lot of people have revisited it that in cases have
Speaker 1: had issues with it. But it did entail the use
Speaker 1: of mirrored sunglasses. Those assigned to play the roles of
Speaker 1: guards in that experiment were given sticks and sunglasses. What
Speaker 1: And basically the issue is that in that experiment, some
Speaker 1: people were assigned to play the role of prisoners and
Speaker 1: some people who were assigned to play the role of guards,
Speaker 1: and they found that even just being given these fake
Speaker 1: role supposedly the people really took on their roles and
Speaker 1: like the guards, became brutal. Well, you know, no matter
Speaker 1: what we think about the Stanford prison experiment, we do
Speaker 1: have plenty of studies and in clothes cognition in the
Speaker 1: ways that various cultural uniforms change the way we think
Speaker 1: about ourselves. Our own abilities are roles, and typically those
Speaker 1: experiments include things like giving somebody a doctor's coat and
Speaker 1: a clipboard but creases their sense of authority. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: in this but you can look back at Stanford prison
Speaker 1: experiment and say, well, a stick and some sunglasses. This
Speaker 1: is kind of to a certain extent that the uniform
Speaker 1: of the guard, that is, how many how many cases
Speaker 1: are sunglasses a part of a uniform official or unofficial
Speaker 1: that have certain attributes that we perhaps take on when
Speaker 1: we wear them, and we're thinking about that particular archetype.
Speaker 1: For instance, it could be something like just the cool
Speaker 1: cat who's wearing shades. Uh, you know, maybe we're just
Speaker 1: thinking about David Caruso putting those those those deal with
Speaker 1: Its shades on and saying something cool. Well, that's another
Speaker 1: good question. Why are sunglasses so generally perceived as cool?
Speaker 1: I've read about this, and you know, one of the
Speaker 1: ideas out there is that sunglasses are perceived as cool because,
Speaker 1: as we've been talking about, they limit people's access to
Speaker 1: your emotions and to your reactions. Right, they make you
Speaker 1: appear more static when other people can't read your expressions,
Speaker 1: you appear more you know, impassive, more confident, more cool, Yeah,
Speaker 1: more stoic. I mean, you know, the old saying is
Speaker 1: whether the eyes that are mirror into the soul. You know,
Speaker 1: the eyes, Our eyes are an important part of how
Speaker 1: we communicate with people, and they can there can be
Speaker 1: a certain vulnerability. Uh. There there are various ways that
Speaker 1: we can We can just have like dumb, staring eyes
Speaker 1: and if you're wearing shades, nobody can see that confused
Speaker 1: look in your eyes. It's a type of social psychological
Speaker 1: armory in some ways quite literally, right, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: they're a way to hide. I was also looking at
Speaker 1: a two thousand article published in Psychological Science, a journal
Speaker 1: of the Association for Psychological Science, and in this researchers
Speaker 1: from the Chinese University of Hong Kong found that the
Speaker 1: participants who relived an embarrassing experience tended to prefer large,
Speaker 1: dark tinted sunglasses. And they also found that embarrassed participants
Speaker 1: expressed greater interest in sunglasses as well as restorative face creams.
Speaker 1: So again they're both exercises and covering your face with something. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: the study was conducted with only Chinese participants, so the
Speaker 1: authors pointed out, you know, they're very likely going to
Speaker 1: be certain cultural elements to to these test subjects that
Speaker 1: wouldn't be president and other test subjects. Of course, that's
Speaker 1: always the case. I mean a lot of study studies
Speaker 1: are just done on American college there might be cultural
Speaker 1: issues there as well, exactly. But but I do feel
Speaker 1: like this in general, it does I think it matches
Speaker 1: up with a lot of our experiences. Uh, if if
Speaker 1: you're going on in public and you've been crying, wearing
Speaker 1: sunglasses is the way to go. I mean, we've all
Speaker 1: had situations to where you're just feeling maybe you just
Speaker 1: feeling a little shy or emotionally vulnerable. Putting on sunglasses,
Speaker 1: even if your eyes are not puffy from tears, it's
Speaker 1: a way of like disconnecting and feeling a little safer
Speaker 1: and being just a little less up in the face
Speaker 1: of the world is putting the screen up. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: I could be wrong about this, but I also feel
Speaker 1: like that there's perhaps some interesting connection between our preference
Speaker 1: for sunglasses and the way that we experience so much
Speaker 1: of our lives through screen devices. Now you know that
Speaker 1: that the sunglasses introduced this idea of looking at the
Speaker 1: world through a kind of barrier or screen, and we're
Speaker 1: constantly doing now social interactions on phones, on computers, on
Speaker 1: devices where we're also interacting with the world through a screen.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's anything interesting to tease out there,
Speaker 1: but it feels it feels right to me. Huh. You know,
Speaker 1: I was just thinking of another thing. Have you ever
Speaker 1: encountered somebody internally? We're talking about people we don't know
Speaker 1: that well, or even celebrities, but people who never see
Speaker 1: without their shades, and then when you finally do, it's
Speaker 1: a little unnerving because you're like, oh, is that what
Speaker 1: your eyes look like? It's like seeing kiss without their makeup.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. It becomes such a part of their identity,
Speaker 1: you know, um, but it also your Their identity becomes
Speaker 1: this slightly less human thing. You know. There's like the
Speaker 1: stoic eyed, dark eyed country music star. And then if
Speaker 1: you remove them, you're like, who's that guy? Who is
Speaker 1: the one who always wore sunglasses? Was it Roy Orbison?
Speaker 1: Did he always have sunglasses on? Yes? I believe he did.
Speaker 1: Another one is Hank Williams Jr. Sunglasses But I believe
Speaker 1: that was if i'm if i'm if memory serves me correctly,
Speaker 1: part of that was due to an injury he's sustained
Speaker 1: as well. Oh really Yeah, Well, I think another way
Speaker 1: that sunglasses lend a sense of coolness and maybe even
Speaker 1: celebrity or glamor to people is that they increase a
Speaker 1: sense of mystery, Right, that's sort of what you're getting
Speaker 1: at here. Well, yeah, because of the other side, what
Speaker 1: do their eyes look like? What is it like to
Speaker 1: have a personal connection with this person I don't even
Speaker 1: I don't even know who Dare stares into the eyes
Speaker 1: of both Cephis. It's like Medusa. Yeah. Um, Speaking of
Speaker 1: psychology and sunglasses, I also read a two fourteen University
Speaker 1: of Sienna a study Sienna in Italy, and they made
Speaker 1: a connection between panic attacks, specifically panic disorders in fear
Speaker 1: of bright lights. And so people who experience uh, panic
Speaker 1: attacks and and and and have a panic disorder, they said,
Speaker 1: often find comfort in the use of sunglasses. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: I wonder what the I wonder what the causal ordering
Speaker 1: there is. Is it like they find comfort in sunglasses
Speaker 1: because they're afraid of bright lights, or they're afraid of
Speaker 1: bright lights because they find comfort in sunglasses. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good point, because yeah, there's so many, now that
Speaker 1: we've discussed all these various, uh, just psychological elements that
Speaker 1: could be in play, from the unclothed cognition to even
Speaker 1: just personal identity. Like if you wear sunglasses so much
Speaker 1: that they are just a part of who you are,
Speaker 1: then it makes sense that you would feel naked without them.
Speaker 1: Maybe you end up just wearing your sunglasses at night,
Speaker 1: much like Corey Hart did. Are you lonely just like Mercy.
Speaker 1: All right, So there you have it. Uh. That is
Speaker 1: the episode of Invention for this week. We do hope
Speaker 1: that you will check out Invention pod dot com. That
Speaker 1: is where you'll find the existing episodes of the Invention Podcast.
Speaker 1: You'll also find links out to our social media accounts,
Speaker 1: and if you want to talk about this episode inside
Speaker 1: of a Facebook group, you should go to the Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind discussion module because that is where
Speaker 1: we are known to hang out and discuss episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind. But we're also happy to
Speaker 1: talk about episodes of Invention. Huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: Scott Benjamin for research assistance on this show, and to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Tory Harrison. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: just to say hi, you can email us at contact
Speaker 1: at in vention pot dot com. You whe