Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing you a classic
Speaker 1: episode of Invention. This one originally published on January seven, nineteen,
Speaker 1: and it's about sunglasses. That's right. Yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: pretty fun one because sunglasses are one of those inventions
Speaker 1: that it's easy to take for granted, and it's easy
Speaker 1: to assume that it's tied pretty much to the modern age.
Speaker 1: But y as we get into here, that's not quite
Speaker 1: the case. Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Robert, what kind of sunglasses
Speaker 1: do you wear? Well? Currently, uh, my son is six
Speaker 1: years old, so I've been going through a spell here
Speaker 1: where I can really only wear whatever kind of semi
Speaker 1: garbage swag sunglasses has come my way, you know, with
Speaker 1: various brand names plastered to the side of them, because inevitably,
Speaker 1: especially when he was younger, my son would have to
Speaker 1: get his hands on whatever kind of sunglasses I had
Speaker 1: in the car. So the sunglasses get smudged, sunglasses get
Speaker 1: scratched up, sunglasses get broken or just lost. And I
Speaker 1: was pretty good at losing sunglasses even before he came
Speaker 1: into my life. Uh So, I'm hoping that I'm working
Speaker 1: up to very soon reaching that point where I can
Speaker 1: actually buy a decent pair of sunglasses that will protect
Speaker 1: my eyes. Did you ever actually wear those company sunglasses
Speaker 1: we got? I have, like them like fold in half
Speaker 1: at the nose. Yeah, I I got those immediately. Mainly
Speaker 1: I I thought to myself, this is a great decoy
Speaker 1: brand because my son is gonna love like the Transformer
Speaker 1: 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 two 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 to be an important part of just the
Speaker 1: iconography of the sunglasses, and that will be more important
Speaker 1: later on in our discussion, but in their their psychological
Speaker 1: effects example in that, but initially here you know, we're
Speaker 1: we're we're complicating the purpose of the sunglasses, babe by 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 a forearm
Speaker 1: to 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 hat you need
Speaker 1: to wear like a hat with two bills right, one
Speaker 1: on top, one at the bottom. Um, it's coming from
Speaker 1: all directions, and you need to use your hands for
Speaker 1: other things. You're an individual, will need to to hunt
Speaker 1: or fish or craft, etcetera. You can't just go around
Speaker 1: with your hands up all the time. Um. When I
Speaker 1: when I think about the challenges of dealing with sunlight,
Speaker 1: and I'm always forced to just think about how amazing
Speaker 1: our eyelids are though for manipulating light well, and our
Speaker 1: iris is of course they our pupils contract when there's
Speaker 1: too much light, but there's a point at which they
Speaker 1: can't contract anymore, and you have to depend on the eyelids.
Speaker 1: One of one example I always go to is there's
Speaker 1: a character in Larry McMurtry's novel Comanche Moon and he
Speaker 1: he winds up tortured by bandit flares and they slice
Speaker 1: his eyelids off. They leave him for for dead in
Speaker 1: the sun, and he's you know, half driven mad by
Speaker 1: the whole whole ordeal but sick eyelids. Oh yeah, it
Speaker 1: is a It is a sick, weird book. Um, I
Speaker 1: love it. It's my favorite McMurtry book. But afterwards, this
Speaker 1: character ends up constructing a pair of special sunglasses for
Speaker 1: himself with these varying, um varying levels of darkness, so
Speaker 1: that he can just click through them as he needs them,
Speaker 1: depending on where he is, if he's a you know,
Speaker 1: indoors outdoors, bright day, uh, you know, cloudy day, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But I always come back to that because it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: have you had to recreate the functionality of your eyelids?
Speaker 1: What kind of invention would you have to have to build?
Speaker 1: You've got so many parts of your body that you
Speaker 1: really don't appreciate but would if they were gone, right,
Speaker 1: But enough about Larry McMurtry's cyborg westerns. Uh, let's let's
Speaker 1: just get down to sunglasses. What is essential to a
Speaker 1: modern pair of sunglasses? What do you what do you need?
Speaker 1: Is we're sort of deconstructing the the invention. Well, you
Speaker 1: need a frame to hold them over the eyes, and
Speaker 1: you need lenses that will, in one way or another
Speaker 1: filter the incoming line. They obviously can't be completely okay
Speaker 1: if you need to be able to see through them,
Speaker 1: but they also need to stop some amount of bad
Speaker 1: stuff from getting in right. So, like from from a
Speaker 1: material level, it seems pretty straightforward. Um, you know, glass
Speaker 1: itself is a rather old invention. We could and we
Speaker 1: can really revisit glass at some point in future episode.
Speaker 1: But you find examples of this in ancient Mesopotamia. Uh.
Speaker 1: Certainly crystals and other substances or were known to to
Speaker 1: ancient people. So just the materials of say building something
Speaker 1: out of six, we can all imagine the sort 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, there are modern
Speaker 1: usage of them. They're they're they're really important. They really
Speaker 1: protect us. Well, think about the sunglasses you wear as
Speaker 1: a kind of radiation suit for your eyes. I think
Speaker 1: on that one for a second. Try try to actually
Speaker 1: cognize the fact that good old fashioned sunlight is literally
Speaker 1: radiation from a star. That's a phrase that always echoes
Speaker 1: in my mind when it's really beaten down on my head.
Speaker 1: Um and a good pair of sunglasses should do multiple
Speaker 1: things right. They should decrease the intensity of the light
Speaker 1: reaching your eyes. So if it's a bright, shining day,
Speaker 1: or there's glare off of water or off of a
Speaker 1: reflective surface or something. You need light to reach your
Speaker 1: eyes in order to see, but you don't need so
Speaker 1: much of it. And when the number of lumens in
Speaker 1: your surroundings exceed what your eyes need in order to see,
Speaker 1: your iris muscles contract. They shrink your pupil the shutter
Speaker 1: of your eye, and that admits less in. But eventually
Speaker 1: your pupils can't contract anymore, and then you have to
Speaker 1: try to limit more light by squinting your eyelids, but
Speaker 1: eventually you run into problems there. Right, sometimes it's so
Speaker 1: bright that squinting becomes difficult, or you know you you
Speaker 1: you're squinting so much you want to completely close your eyes. Now.
Speaker 1: The other thing that's important for sunglasses to do is
Speaker 1: decrease or eliminate ultra violet radiation when when that's coming
Speaker 1: at your eyes now, there's really no benefit to getting
Speaker 1: ultra violet radiation in your eyes. Whereas you need the
Speaker 1: visible light that comes in from the sun in order
Speaker 1: to see your surroundings, you don't really need UV light
Speaker 1: at all. And so if sunglasses can reduce or even
Speaker 1: completely eliminate U V exposure to your eyes. That's a
Speaker 1: good thing, because your eyes can be injured by u
Speaker 1: V exposure. But as we were saying earlier, also let's
Speaker 1: not ignore the fact that sunglasses are a very profound
Speaker 1: style choice and play a psychological and cultural role as well.
Speaker 1: I think people often wear sunglasses as much for style
Speaker 1: and psychological reasons as they do for uh, for reducing
Speaker 1: glare and reducing UV exposure. In any event, you're gonna
Speaker 1: want a good pair of sunglasses before you go out to, say,
Speaker 1: a sporting event, right for a number of reasons, because
Speaker 1: it's you're you're outdoors and it may be very bright. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then it's also a social engagement. You know, you
Speaker 1: wanna look cool, uh to the other fans or their
Speaker 1: friends and family that have traveled there with you. In
Speaker 1: the case of the dude, you can't go bowling without
Speaker 1: sunglasses exactly. Uh. So, for our first historical journey, in
Speaker 1: our attempt to understand sunglasses of old, let's go back
Speaker 1: to the ancient Romans, Let's go to the Colosseum. Now,
Speaker 1: this I think is actually going to be a false example,
Speaker 1: but it's something that's interesting that sometimes gets cited in
Speaker 1: this context. So we're gonna to our old friend Plenty
Speaker 1: of the Elder first century CE Roman writer in his
Speaker 1: Natural History translated by John Bostock. Plenty is discussing in
Speaker 1: in book thirty seven of his Natural History, quote the
Speaker 1: natural history of precious stones, and he comes to a
Speaker 1: section on what he calls Smaragdes. I could have sworn
Speaker 1: that was one of the one of the raith kings
Speaker 1: in the Lord of the Rings the saga. But I
Speaker 1: don't think so. Which anniversary gift is smar Agnes? I
Speaker 1: can never remember. It's like it's like wood, but ivory Smaragdes. Right,
Speaker 1: So samur agnes appears to be a term used for
Speaker 1: green precious stones, for barrel stones like emerald, or for
Speaker 1: jasper stones. Uh. And he so he seems to be
Speaker 1: talking about emeralds. I think that's the way it's most
Speaker 1: often translated. And Plenty dwells for a while on how
Speaker 1: beautiful the emerald is and how RESTful to the eye,
Speaker 1: how soothing to look upon quote. Even when the vision
Speaker 1: has been fatigued with intently viewing other objects, it is
Speaker 1: refreshed by being turned upon this stone. And lapidaries know
Speaker 1: of nothing that is more gratefully soothing to the eyes.
Speaker 1: It's soft green tints being wonderfully adapted for assuaging lassitude
Speaker 1: when felt in those organs. By those organs, I think
Speaker 1: he means eyes. But anyway, getting to to the part
Speaker 1: that's often cited as as emerald sunglasses, but actually it
Speaker 1: appears to not be, he writes, quote, when the surface
Speaker 1: of the sami agnus is flat, it reflects the image
Speaker 1: of objects in the same manner as a mirror. The
Speaker 1: Emperor Nero used to view the combats of the gladiators
Speaker 1: upon a Smaragdus upon a Smaragdus ban key here perhaps right.
Speaker 1: So this would have been the first century CE, and
Speaker 1: it's been cited as an early use of tinted transparencies
Speaker 1: in the sun. The idea that Nero was maybe watching
Speaker 1: the net fighters and the pursuers the secutors through Gym's
Speaker 1: like lenses. So just I guess try to imagine he's
Speaker 1: holding him rolds over his eyes and looking through them
Speaker 1: like lenses to fill alter out some of the glare.
Speaker 1: I think I also saw an artistic interpretation of this,
Speaker 1: where you see the you know, the the portly emperor,
Speaker 1: they're all in his finery, and he's holding up something
Speaker 1: that looks like it's almost like opera uh binoculars, you know,
Speaker 1: except it's just one emerald that he's holding up to
Speaker 1: his eye. I'm thinking, with the green and that image
Speaker 1: you're describing, this has got to be the inspiration for
Speaker 1: David Lynch's depiction of Baron Harkonen in his adaptation of Dune.
Speaker 1: Oh does he have an emerald? Well, everything's green around.
Speaker 1: It's like his his rooms are green. He's got this
Speaker 1: green environment. He's kind of a Nero like figure. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the reason I said this was a false choice is
Speaker 1: because it sounds to me like in the context Plenty
Speaker 1: meant that Nero if this story is even true. Watched
Speaker 1: the fights as reflected in the surface of the sami
Speaker 1: agnous like a mirror, because he was just talking about
Speaker 1: how it reflects like a mirror, and this would still
Speaker 1: have probably some some like sun dampening effect. Right, just
Speaker 1: tried imagine something reflected an emerald. It's not going to
Speaker 1: be reflected in a blinding way. But so he's looking
Speaker 1: at that since the emerald reflects less light than the
Speaker 1: source provides. I was looking at a text titled the
Speaker 1: Origin and Development of Spectacles by C. J. S. Thompson,
Speaker 1: and this is an older Texas is from N seven,
Speaker 1: but he also mentions the Nero story and he definitely
Speaker 1: argued too that it was probably a case where Nero
Speaker 1: just liked to watch the festivities colored green um which
Speaker 1: you know via the Emerald, and that he gained no
Speaker 1: sun shading from it. And yeah, I think my suspicion
Speaker 1: here is that based on some recent research we did
Speaker 1: for stuff to build your mind about gladiatorial combat for
Speaker 1: our episode on the trident Um, you know there there
Speaker 1: was if you're a fan of both the sort of
Speaker 1: the sporting combat of of the gladiatorial spectacle as well
Speaker 1: as like the drama and all these other ridiculous aspects
Speaker 1: of it, you're gonna be you might you might gain
Speaker 1: something from looking out at this combat between men dressed
Speaker 1: as fish men using nautical weapons and then adding a
Speaker 1: green overlay on that. UM. I could see where where
Speaker 1: the green tent could perhaps be be helpful in that
Speaker 1: that particular mode of entertainment. What you're saying is taking
Speaker 1: on a decidedly Lynchian vibe. I I think I think
Speaker 1: the connection is there now Thompson also points out that
Speaker 1: while the Romans certainly suffered from eye problems and had
Speaker 1: their own treatments for those ailments, there's no mention in
Speaker 1: the work of say Celsus of artificial site aids. He
Speaker 1: mentions that in writings prior to the thirteenth century, one
Speaker 1: finds only occasional mentions of magnifying classes. So the use
Speaker 1: of some sort of a lens to uh look at
Speaker 1: finder details or perhaps you know, holding it up to
Speaker 1: a text. But uh, you don't see mention of spectacles,
Speaker 1: by the way. He also wrote that there was no
Speaker 1: evidence that lenses were known to the ancient Egyptians or
Speaker 1: the Hebrews. However, we do have a very early magnifying glass,
Speaker 1: or depending on who you ask, perhaps a fire starting glass,
Speaker 1: something that you used to refract the rays of the sun,
Speaker 1: you know, to start a small fire. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that children may sometimes do when
Speaker 1: trying to burn ants, hopefully not to ants, hopefully not.
Speaker 1: I mean, and you know one has to be careful,
Speaker 1: but at any rate, this particular lens, the Nimrod lens,
Speaker 1: is a three thousand year old crystal unearthed in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty by 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. And now you have to ask you
Speaker 1: the question, like to what extent did they just look
Speaker 1: through it because it was cool? Like what's more mystical
Speaker 1: than holding up some sort of you know, gleaming crystal,
Speaker 1: even if it's clear, and watching how the world is
Speaker 1: distorted ever so slightly. Now, another thing that's worth noting
Speaker 1: is that we've been talking about lenses and tinted lenses.
Speaker 1: But obviously people came up with ways of protecting their
Speaker 1: eyes from the sun, uh, having accessories beyond just their
Speaker 1: hands and their eyelids and stuff to protect their eyes
Speaker 1: from the sun long before there were there were tinted
Speaker 1: glass or plastic lenses or anything, for example, hats and umbrellas.
Speaker 1: That's obvious, yeah, But a much more ingenious and much
Speaker 1: more interesting one is what I want to mention the Inuit,
Speaker 1: and you pick people's of the northern circumpolar regions today Canada, Alaska,
Speaker 1: Greenland and Russia have for centuries made these ingenious devices
Speaker 1: known as snow goggles. Yes, and and I want to
Speaker 1: come back to what we said earlier about lumens before
Speaker 1: we get into this, because I think this really drives
Speaker 1: home the necessity that led to the invention. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: in an indoor environment, a humanist typically typically going to
Speaker 1: encounter four hundred, six hundred lumens. That's the intensity of
Speaker 1: the light um and our comfortable level four loomens, it's'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. Uh,
Speaker 1: you can create almost kind of double sun effects, sun
Speaker 1: above and sun below being reflected back up. Whereas you know,
Speaker 1: a normal patch of ground that's got say grass or
Speaker 1: just open soil, might reflect about ten percent of the
Speaker 1: UV ray is coming from the sun. Snow can reflect
Speaker 1: not quite a hundred percent, but something like close to
Speaker 1: a of it, nearly doubling your UV exposure. And so
Speaker 1: if you are, say living in in northern regions where
Speaker 1: there's a lot of snow cover, one thing that works
Speaker 1: 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 photocrotitis. 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: photocharrotitis is often described as something like quote sunburn of
Speaker 1: the eye. Symptoms include pain and feeling of having like
Speaker 1: irritans 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 there where you
Speaker 1: just had you had no glass, no lens, shutters, these slits, yes,
Speaker 1: so shutter shapes, which yeah, you look at the especially
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties versions of these, and it's easy to
Speaker 1: just think, this is ridiculous. This is the this is
Speaker 1: the sunglasses, this is eye wear. Is a purely decorative element,
Speaker 1: and to a certain extent is true. But they do
Speaker 1: have a certain functionality as well. Yeah, and in many
Speaker 1: ways a highly effective functionality. I mean this, if you
Speaker 1: don't have tinted glass to work with. This is a
Speaker 1: genius design. Yeah, and and the necessity that led to
Speaker 1: it like like this would this would be the kind
Speaker 1: of environment that would necessitate sunglasses, UM in a way
Speaker 1: that other parts of the world did not. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, let's take a quick break, and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we'll discuss some more curios from the
Speaker 1: UH the history of invention UH in regards to the sunglasses.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back now. Another frequently sided example of
Speaker 1: of sunglasses or early sunglasses used UH involved them not
Speaker 1: being used to protect against the sun or perhaps in
Speaker 1: any way affect vision, but that they were allegedly used
Speaker 1: just to hide your eyes from others. This is this
Speaker 1: is a crucially important part of sunglasses. Could not ignore it.
Speaker 1: I mean, think of all the times you've worn sunglasses.
Speaker 1: And there are times where you wear them to protect
Speaker 1: your eyes. There are times when you wear them to
Speaker 1: to see better than high a light intensive environment. There
Speaker 1: are times when you do it to look cool. But
Speaker 1: there are times when say I've I've warned them, for instance,
Speaker 1: on the train before UH, even when the train is underground,
Speaker 1: because it kind of makes me a little invisible if
Speaker 1: I have my sunglasses on, my my earbuds in, then
Speaker 1: I am like less visibly present. Well, you, it means
Speaker 1: you can look around the world around you without ever
Speaker 1: unequivocally being caught looking at someone or something. It's a
Speaker 1: natural human tendency to want to look around and see
Speaker 1: who's around you. Like, if you get caught looking at somebody,
Speaker 1: that's always awkward, especially if you've got some kind of
Speaker 1: social anxiety. You don't you don't want to like make
Speaker 1: that eye contact and be like, oh, we just both
Speaker 1: looked at each other at the same time, right, And
Speaker 1: if you're on the train, sometimes you need to look
Speaker 1: at the weird person on the train. And if you're
Speaker 1: not wearing sunglasses and you're doing this, that weird person
Speaker 1: might be you. It's just a great solution for everybody involved.
Speaker 1: So multiple sources report that Chinese judges wore smokey courtz
Speaker 1: glass is to hide their eye expressions from the court
Speaker 1: during the thirteenth century, So this would have been during
Speaker 1: the Song Dynasty through twelve seventy nine. So it's looking
Speaker 1: around a little bit about this, and Harvard's came in
Speaker 1: to wrote the following in nineteen thirty six in the
Speaker 1: introduction of spectacles into China, which which deals um, you know,
Speaker 1: in large part was just spectacles in general. And if
Speaker 1: we come back and discuss spectacles on the show specifically,
Speaker 1: will probably return to this and and other sources. But
Speaker 1: he cites Chinese writings that indicated that quote. Under the song,
Speaker 1: dynasty judges in deciding cases in the court used rock
Speaker 1: crystal or courts to read illegible legal documents in the sun.
Speaker 1: So here the idea seems to be that they were
Speaker 1: using them for magnification instead, or perhaps in addition to um,
Speaker 1: shielding their eyes from other people at the court. Well,
Speaker 1: it's specific fis in the sun, so that would seem
Speaker 1: to make it sound like they were trying to shield
Speaker 1: their eyes from from glare perhaps. So yeah, this one
Speaker 1: this leaves me confused though as to like what was
Speaker 1: actually going on or was it a case where, for instance,
Speaker 1: these spectacles were arranged for reading in the sun or
Speaker 1: for some sort of magnification purpose, but then they realized,
Speaker 1: oh wait, these also shield our eyes and it makes
Speaker 1: a judging a little easier, right, Well, you can absolutely
Speaker 1: see how sunglasses would and we'll get more into the
Speaker 1: psychological effects later on, but you can see how sunglasses
Speaker 1: would be helpful if you were trying to give the
Speaker 1: appearance of impartiality. You know, right, if you're a judge,
Speaker 1: you want to hide any sign of your face showing
Speaker 1: emotion and reaction to arguments or something like that. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that's the reasoning here, but you can see
Speaker 1: how it could be right, and you still remain you
Speaker 1: still retain a portion of your humanity in a way
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't if you were wearing, say a hood
Speaker 1: or an iron mask or some other um covering for
Speaker 1: your face. Now, I looked at another text, Old Chinese
Speaker 1: Spectacles by Auto Durham Rasmussen, and there's a discussion of
Speaker 1: methods used to grind quote crystal smoky courts in a
Speaker 1: variety of rose courts into lenses. And apparently Marco Polo
Speaker 1: reported Chinese lenses in twelve seventy, stating that people used
Speaker 1: lenses of quarts or semi precious stones to aid their site. Okay,
Speaker 1: but here we're still talking about not just like casual
Speaker 1: usage among the people, not fashion usage, but like specialized
Speaker 1: cases and in some cases seeming to be some kind
Speaker 1: of magnifier or site aid. Right, Yeah, And definitely like
Speaker 1: a premium item that would be used by a specialist,
Speaker 1: and in fact it does seem that also in like Europe,
Speaker 1: in the United States, tinted glasses did exist some in
Speaker 1: the past few centuries, but they were not widely used
Speaker 1: and certainly not outside some kind of corrective or medical
Speaker 1: content xtore specialized research context until the twentieth century. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean some classes have become such a a fashion
Speaker 1: symbol it is easy to forget the necessity of them,
Speaker 1: even if we're not dealing with just the basic ideas
Speaker 1: of ooh, it's like a super bright day or you're
Speaker 1: in the middle of a of a snow field. Um,
Speaker 1: because tinted lenses can assist people with low vision, and
Speaker 1: they're often prescribed to people with ocular diseases such as
Speaker 1: age related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, cataract retinopathy, cone dystrophy,
Speaker 1: and oculo cutaneous albinism. Yeah, I've also seen references to
Speaker 1: tinted lenses being recommended for, say, people who were undergoing
Speaker 1: some of the symptoms of syphilis or something like that,
Speaker 1: which makes me wonder if there's a connection with I
Speaker 1: have to go to a movie in in Francis Ford
Speaker 1: Coppola's Dracula, where Gary Oldman is Dracula. Where's those tinted
Speaker 1: lenses in the I guess that's supposed to be the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century in England. Yeah, well, I mean, as I've
Speaker 1: I've ever read before. There are theories, and this is
Speaker 1: again just a theory that that brom Stoker could have
Speaker 1: had syphilis and that might have on some level informed
Speaker 1: his writing of Dracula. I don't remember him mentioning tinted
Speaker 1: spectacles in the book, did he? I do not recall
Speaker 1: that being a detail of the book, but it's definitely
Speaker 1: there in that movie anyway. It's it's interesting, it's an
Speaker 1: interesting choice. Whyever Coppola did it? Um. But for modern sunglasses,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say that they were actually exactly invented
Speaker 1: at any particular time, because we as we mentioned, various
Speaker 1: kinds of shaded or tinted lenses had existed for a
Speaker 1: while for various specialized uses. It wasn't until the nineteen
Speaker 1: twenties I think, really when commercial sunglasses and tinted goggles
Speaker 1: for driving often really became popular. And then especially it
Speaker 1: seems in the nineteen thirties when commercially produced sunglasses became
Speaker 1: popular in the in the United States due to their
Speaker 1: being a fashion item worn by the rich and the glamorous. Now,
Speaker 1: if we want to focus briefly on the idea of
Speaker 1: how sunglasses actually work, I feel like you can. You
Speaker 1: can take a couple of approaches here. You can go
Speaker 1: the very simple route, or you can go the incredibly
Speaker 1: tedious route. Right, And how do we how do we
Speaker 1: avoid those two? Well? We can. I think what we'll
Speaker 1: do is we'll try to we'll try and hit the
Speaker 1: high notes here and and just remind everybody, if you
Speaker 1: want a more in depth discussion of how sunglasses work,
Speaker 1: there's actually a how stuff works article, How sunglasses work.
Speaker 1: Oddly enough, that's the title of the article. That's a
Speaker 1: pretty good one. Yeah, and it's it's a pretty It
Speaker 1: is a pretty good one. It takes you through a
Speaker 1: lot of the more optical details, like essentially, to really
Speaker 1: understand how sunglasses work, you needed like a full refresher
Speaker 1: on how light works. And that's what this article provides.
Speaker 1: And that's what we do not have time to provide
Speaker 1: here today. But we talked about lumens already, and we've
Speaker 1: talked about just basically how sunglasses modify incoming light to
Speaker 1: your eyes. Now, there are different ways that different types
Speaker 1: of sunglasses do that, right, modern sunglasses, especially depending on
Speaker 1: a number of different methods. There's tinting, polarization, photochromic lenses,
Speaker 1: there's mirror mirroring, scratch resistant coading, anti reflective coding, and
Speaker 1: UV coding. Tinting, though, is largely what we're talking about here, uh,
Speaker 1: and it's certainly key to the older methods of LEMBS
Speaker 1: based shades. Gray tint is generally popular because gray tint
Speaker 1: reduces the overall amount of brightness with the least amount
Speaker 1: of color distortion. Because this is this is actually a
Speaker 1: really interesting thing to to read up on, because when
Speaker 1: you think about the color of shades, it's easy to
Speaker 1: just think that it's just purely, you know, a fashion choice.
Speaker 1: Am I gonna have brown? Am I gonna maybe a
Speaker 1: mood choice? Like are you nero? And you want to
Speaker 1: see the gladiator fights in green? Because you like green? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Maybe I like rose rose tinted glasses. There's actually now
Speaker 1: I'm remembering that I have been into various New Age
Speaker 1: stores where they sell um glass is that are tinted
Speaker 1: within and they come with like documentation to tell you
Speaker 1: about how this particular tinant will affect your mood. Oh,
Speaker 1: like in a like a magic stone power kind of way,
Speaker 1: Like it has the powers of the supposed powers of
Speaker 1: these crystals embedded in the glass. Oh. Yes, there's definitely
Speaker 1: a new age crystal vibe to it. But also I
Speaker 1: think maybe maybe there's a they were incorporating a little
Speaker 1: bit of color theory as well. How do I get
Speaker 1: diamond sunglasses? I just want to look through dark diamonds.
Speaker 1: I want to say that, um, the dark crystal McDuck
Speaker 1: had those real maybe, but well, I want to say
Speaker 1: that there is like a like, apart from the cartoon
Speaker 1: that showed when it played all the clips at the beginning,
Speaker 1: that he had like diamonds stuck in his eyes. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm thinking of, Okay, but I think, yeah, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't want diamonds stuck in your eyes. That'd be pointy. Um.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that the tacom 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 tints reduced 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.
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 combat. 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 tinting depends on constant density, and
Speaker 1: what does that mean? So this is a uniform tinting
Speaker 1: throughout the lens. Nowadays, we'd have to wear those shades
Speaker 1: 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 that's
Speaker 1: got Luke in it. Oh yeah, you're talking about old
Speaker 1: cool hand Luke and the man with no eyes that
Speaker 1: that chain gang guard where he's always wearing those those
Speaker 1: perfectly mirrored shades and just seems 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 simply 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, 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 their 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 a 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 enforcement figures, right, and those chain gang figures
Speaker 1: like the man with no eyes or the clearly the
Speaker 1: cool hand Luke inspired character in the Cohen Brothers. Oh brother,
Speaker 1: where art thou? Where you often see like fire reflected
Speaker 1: in his dark shades, but never his eyes. And there
Speaker 1: is actually research on the effects of sunglasses on human behavior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was looking at a two thousand ten University of
Speaker 1: Toronto study that found that people wearing sunglasses were less generous. Now,
Speaker 1: this was via a very small experiment in which participants
Speaker 1: were given a small amount of money to divvy up
Speaker 1: between themselves and another individual, and um and and yeah,
Speaker 1: they found that if you were wearing the sunglasses. You
Speaker 1: were a little sting ere with the money. In a way,
Speaker 1: It's like they could see less of you, and therefore
Speaker 1: there was less to be lost in uh in in
Speaker 1: in dishing out less money. Well, it's this feeling of
Speaker 1: being inside and being disconnected. I think that has something
Speaker 1: to do with that. I mean, it's the same way
Speaker 1: that you are much. I mean, maybe not you, but
Speaker 1: I would suspect you, like most people are just less
Speaker 1: generous when thinking about the people around you when you're
Speaker 1: in a car. You ever notice how like if you
Speaker 1: if you were walking past somebody on the sidewalk and
Speaker 1: they got in your way, you wouldn't You wouldn't be like,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with you? You? You know, get out of
Speaker 1: my way. But people in cars say stuff like that
Speaker 1: all the time. I think it has something to do
Speaker 1: with like looking out through that screen on the world.
Speaker 1: It creates this barrier that undercuts your generosity and connection
Speaker 1: with other people outside as humans and turns them more
Speaker 1: into like obstacle stimuli. Yeah. Now, And another thing which
Speaker 1: you mention is that this study does follow in the
Speaker 1: tradition of Philippa Zimbardo's famous Stanford prison experiment. Which show
Speaker 1: it's easy to forget because this is like the less
Speaker 1: powerful detail of that study. But I mean, I think
Speaker 1: I have read that there there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who look back on that study and think, you know,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't draw too many conclusions from it. I think
Speaker 1: I don't remember exactly what the critics sisms 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. And
Speaker 1: basically the issue is that in that experiment, some people
Speaker 1: were assigned to play the role of prisoners and some
Speaker 1: people were assigned to play the role of guards, and
Speaker 1: they found that even just being given these fake roles,
Speaker 1: supposedly the people really took on their roles and like
Speaker 1: the guards, became brutal. Well, you know, no matter what
Speaker 1: we think about the Stanford Prison experiment, we do have
Speaker 1: plenty of studies and clothed cognition in the ways that
Speaker 1: various cultural uniforms change the way we think about ourselves.
Speaker 1: Our own abilities are roles, and typically those experiments include
Speaker 1: things like giving somebody a doctor's coat and a clipboard
Speaker 1: but preases their sense of authority. Yeah, but in this
Speaker 1: but you can back at Stanford prison experiment and say, well,
Speaker 1: a stick and some sunglasses. This is kind of to
Speaker 1: a certain extent that the uniform of the guard. That
Speaker 1: is so how many how many cases are sunglasses a
Speaker 1: part of a uniform official or unofficial that have certain
Speaker 1: attributes that we perhaps take on when we wear them,
Speaker 1: and we're thinking about that particular archetype. For instance, it
Speaker 1: could be something like just the cool cat who's wearing shades. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we're just thinking about David Caruso putting
Speaker 1: those those those deal with It shades on and saying
Speaker 1: something cool. Well, that's another good question. Why are sunglasses
Speaker 1: so generally perceived as cool? I've read about this, and
Speaker 1: you know, one of the ideas out there is that
Speaker 1: sunglasses are perceived as cool because, as we've been talking about,
Speaker 1: they limit people's access to your emotions and to your reactions. Right,
Speaker 1: they make you appear more static. When other people can't
Speaker 1: read your expressions, you appear more you know, impassive, more confident,
Speaker 1: and more cool. Yeah, more stoic. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: the old saying is whether the eyes that are mirror
Speaker 1: into the soul. You know, the eyes. Our eyes are
Speaker 1: an important part of how we communicate with people, and
Speaker 1: they can there can be a certain vulnerability. Uh. There,
Speaker 1: there are various ways that we can We can just
Speaker 1: have like dumb staring eyes and if you're wearing shades,
Speaker 1: nobody can see that confused look in your eyes. It's
Speaker 1: a type of social psychological armor. Yeah, in some ways,
Speaker 1: quite literally, right, Yeah, I mean they're a way to hide.
Speaker 1: I was also looking at a two thousand thirteen article
Speaker 1: published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for
Speaker 1: Psychological Science, and in this researchers from the Chinese University
Speaker 1: of Hong Kong found that the participants who relived an
Speaker 1: embarrassing experience tended to prefer large, dark tinted sunglasses, and
Speaker 1: they also found that embarrassed participants expressed greater interest in
Speaker 1: sunglasses as well as restorative face creams. So again, they're
Speaker 1: like both exercises and covering your face with some thing. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: the study was conducted with only Chinese participants, so the
Speaker 1: authors pointed out, you know, they're they're very likely going
Speaker 1: to be certain cultural elements to to these test subjects
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be president and other test subjects. Of course,
Speaker 1: that's always the case. I mean a lot of studies
Speaker 1: studies are just done on American college studies. There might
Speaker 1: be cultural issues there as well, exactly. But but I
Speaker 1: do feel like this in general, it does I think
Speaker 1: it matches up with a lot of our experiences. Uh,
Speaker 1: if if you're going on in public and you've been crying,
Speaker 1: wearing sunglasses is the way to go. I mean, we've
Speaker 1: all had situations too where you're just feeling maybe you're
Speaker 1: just 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. It's 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. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Becomes such a part of their identity, you know, um,
Speaker 1: but it also, you're their identity becomes this slightly less
Speaker 1: human thing. You know. There's like the stoic eyed, dark
Speaker 1: eyed U country music star. And then if you remove them,
Speaker 1: you're like, who's that guy? Who is the one who
Speaker 1: always wore sunglasses? Was it Roy or person? Did he
Speaker 1: always have sunglasses on? Yes? I believe he did. Another
Speaker 1: one is Hank Williams Jr. Oh No of sunglasses. But
Speaker 1: I believe that was, if i'm if I'm if memory
Speaker 1: serves me correctly, part of that was due to an
Speaker 1: injury he's sustained as well. Yeah. Well, I think another
Speaker 1: way that sunglasses lend a sense of coolness and maybe
Speaker 1: even celebrity or glamor to people is that they increase
Speaker 1: a sense of mystery, Right, that's sort of what you're
Speaker 1: getting at here. Well, yeah, because of the other side,
Speaker 1: what do their eyes look like? What is it like
Speaker 1: to have a personal connection with this person? I don't
Speaker 1: even I don't even know who dare stares into the
Speaker 1: eyes of Bosephis. It's like Medusa. Yeah, um. I Speaking
Speaker 1: of psychology and sunglasses, I also read a two fourteen
Speaker 1: University of Sienna 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: off and find come for in the use of sunglasses.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I wonder what the wonder what the causal
Speaker 1: ordering there is? Is it like they find comfort in
Speaker 1: sunglasses because they're afraid of bright lights, or they're afraid
Speaker 1: of bright lights because they find comfort in sunglasses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point because yeah, there's so many, now
Speaker 1: that we've discussed all these various, uh, just psychological elements
Speaker 1: that could be in play, from the unclothed cognition to
Speaker 1: even just personal identity. Like if you wear sunglasses so
Speaker 1: much 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 me? 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 uh the existing episodes of the
Speaker 1: Invention Podcast. You'll also find links out to our social
Speaker 1: media accounts, and if you want to talk about this
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Speaker 1: is where we are known to hang out and discuss
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. But we're also
Speaker 1: happy to talk about episodes of Invention. Huge Thanks as
Speaker 1: always to Scott Benjamin for research assistance on this show,
Speaker 1: and to our excellent audio producer Tory Harrison. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hi, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at invention pod dot com.