Monday, March 1, 2010

GLASS TRADING










The firstl in the trade of luxury glass goods was Johann Christoph Riedel, born in 1678. He journeyed all over Europe trading glass, travelling as far as Spain and Portugal. The earnings from the business justified the long, arduous and dangerous travels. The 9th generation, Claus J. Riedel (born 1925) had a vision. He changed stemware from traditional coloured and cut glass to plain, unadorned, thin blown, long stemmed wine glasses. He gained immediate recognition from sophisticated customers and museums. Many design awards signalled that a new era had began. Museums bought pieces for their exhibition, like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which today still has Riedel in their permanent collection.




Scratch-resistant coatings can be applied to most plastic lenses giving them similar scratch resistance to glass. Hydrophobic coatings designed to ease cleaning are also available, as are anti-reflective coatings intended to reduce glare, improve night vision and make the wearer's eyes more visible.
CR-39 lenses are the most common plastic lenses due to their low weight, high scratch resistance, and low transparency for ultra violet and infrared radiation. Polycarbonate and Trivex lenses are the lightest and most shatter-resistant, making them the best for impact protection,[1] yet offer poor optics due to high dispersion, and having a low Abbe number of 31.
Not all glasses are designed solely for vision correction but are worn for protection, viewing visual information (such as stereoscopy) or simply just for aesthetic or fashion values. Safety glasses are a kind of eye protection against flying debris or against visible and near visible light or radiation. Sunglasses allow better vision in bright daylight, and may protect against damage from high levels of ultraviolet light.
The earliest historical reference to magnification dates back to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs in the 8th century BC, which depict "simple glass meniscal lenses". The earliest written record of magnification dates back to the 1st century AD, when Seneca the Younger, a tutor of Emperor Nero, wrote: "Letters, however small and indistinct, are seen enlarged and more clearly through a globe of glass filled with water".[3] Emperor Nero is also said to have watched the gladiatorial games using an emerald as a corrective lens.
Corrective lenses were said to be used by Abbas Ibn Firnas in the 9th century, who had devised a way to produce very clear glass. These glasses could be shaped and polished into round rocks used for viewing and were known as reading stones. The earliest evidence of "a magnifying device, a convex lens forming a magnified image," dates back the Book of Optics published by Alhazen in 1021. Its translation into Latin in the 12th century was instrumental to the invention of eyeglasses in 13th century Italy.

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