The development of china glass
1. primitive legend stage (Huangdi period to Western Han Dynasty).
This stage is mainly the original crystal stone tablets and flat sunshade or eye-catching lenses (some people think that crystal fire mirrors have appeared at this time).
Glasses stone (crystal) came from the wild, which was an era of eating bird hair and drinking blood. Our ancestors inadvertently found clusters of crystal clear stones on the floodplain, caves and stone walls, through which we can see objects and arouse infinite reverie. This is the natural material that can be used to grind lenses-crystal stone. This is the material basis of the origin of glasses.
"Records of the Merits and Virtues of the Yellow Emperor" records: "The Emperor and the Empress Dowager will meet in the palace and cast twelve fire mirrors for use every month. Then the mirror began in Xuanyuan. " Legend has it that around 2600 BC, the Yellow Emperor in China blocked the sun with lenses and observed the stars. According to legend, Confucius once recorded that ancestors used transparent minerals such as crystal stone as glasses to treat eye diseases (inflammation).
According to the Archaeological Jiyuan, the Yang Sui (bronze concave mirror) unearthed from the Western Zhou Tomb at No.60, Joo Won?, Fufeng, Shaanxi Province proves that China people have mastered the principle of direct light and refraction as early as 1000 BC, and applied it to making mirrors and making fires. In the 5th century BC, Mo Zhai, an ancient philosopher and scientist in China, expounded the theory that light shines in a straight line and has reflective characteristics in Mozi. "Huainan Wanbi Book" in the Han Dynasty also recorded: "Take a big mirror and hang it high, put a pot under it, and you will see your neighbors." It proves that as early as the 2nd century BC, our ancestors used the refraction principle of light to observe things in a hidden way and successfully invented the world's first periscope. All these laid the foundation for the emergence of monolithic optical glass in China.
It is also reported that working people in our country made the most primitive contact lenses from cooked shrimp shells 2000 years ago to improve people's eyesight.
2. Single shot stage (Eastern Han Dynasty-Northern Song Dynasty).
Entering the Han Dynasty, social economy, science and culture have made great progress. With the invention of papermaking, the appearance of movable type printing, the remarkable progress of agriculture and handicrafts, and the introduction of Buddhist culture, scholars have recorded and written a large number of classics. According to the teacher, it is difficult to recognize the fine print of flies, so naturally an eye aid is needed. Thus, the magnifying glass was born. The excavation of the magnifying glass with gold ring embedded in Wang Liujing's tomb in Guangling, No.2 Han Tomb in Ganquan, Hanjiang, Jiangsu Province, is an empirical study. The diameter of the mirror is 1.3 cm, and it is embedded in a gold ring with a beaded pattern extracted from gold. The total weight is 2.3 grams, and the object is magnified 4 to 5 times. The size of the vessel, the exquisite selection of materials and the exquisite decoration of the craft were rare in China at that time and even in the world. This mirror eloquently proves that China could process and grind the lens of the crystal convex lens in the early Eastern Han Dynasty (65438+the first half of the 20th century).
A magnifying glass made of crystal stone unearthed from the Golden Tomb in the northern suburb of Nanjing, with a diameter of 2 cm and a center thickness of 0.5 cm, can magnify objects by 3 to 4 times. This proves once again that China used crystal in the production of optical lenses as early as the Eastern Han Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty. In the first year of Sui Daye (AD 6 10), Chao, a physician in Sui Dynasty, presided over the compilation of "On the Causes and Symptoms of Diseases", expounding that "eyes cannot be farsighted", that is, myopia diseases and their treatment methods, and made contributions to correcting vision in medical theory. In the Tang Dynasty, China's feudal society reached its peak, with unprecedented development in economy, culture, art and Buddhism, and increasingly mature technologies in medicine and optics. The appearance of a large number of printed books and classics provides objective conditions for the development of glasses. A magnifying glass with a circular ring handle is likely to appear during this period. It is reported that this kind of glasses was used by scholars in the Tang Dynasty. Shen Kuo discussed the imaging theory of geometric optics, concave mirror and convex mirror in Meng Qian Bi Tan in the Northern Song Dynasty, which further laid the theoretical foundation of China optics. Monocular glasses have gone through three stages: single frameless, single frame and single frame, which laid a theoretical and material foundation for the emergence of bifocal glasses.
3. Double-lens stage (Southern Song Dynasty, Yuan and Ming Dynasties).
After using monocle 1000 years, people find it inconvenient to see with hand-held glasses. After repeated practice, they have made double glasses. Two glasses have gone through the development stages from two arch beams to beam-frame connections, from hand-held type to lanyard ear type, and from no forehead support to forehead support.
In the Song Dynasty, Hu wrote "The Clear Record of Heaven and Cave": "Old people don't distinguish fine books, but they love them." Zhu Mu's Yu Fang Sheng Lan in Song Dynasty once mentioned that "Manchuria adds clouds and loves clouds to catch mirrors", while Zhang Zilie's Zhengzitong in Ming Dynasty said that "clouds love clouds to catch mirrors". "Zhou Fang Miscellaneous Notes" by Tang people in the Ming Dynasty said: "The things given by the mysterious temple, if rich, are mica-like, but extremely thin. With the gold-inlaid jade wheel, the new combination is one and the ambiguity is two. The old man can't distinguish the fine books, but the words are doubled. "
In the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, Zhao Yi wrote in the 33rd volume "Examination of Jade Cong with Glasses": "The stone order broke the prison and more than a dozen kinds of water were taken into it. It goes without saying at first that people who know the case are so black that they will see it with water. " "Zeng Shang You Lu": Shi Ling, a native of Meishan in Song Dynasty, was a scholar. Dolma Liu's leisure diary was written in Song Lizong (1240). Accordingly, the author thinks that the crystal stone tablets used by Shi Ling are more than a dozen single crystal convex lenses (reading glasses with different degrees), which are probably held in both hands with their eyes facing the light. Therefore, Mr. Nie Chonghou, a famous expert in the history of glasses in China, came to the conclusion that glasses were invented in China in the first half of the13rd century and in Europe in the second half of the13rd century. But the glasses invented in the Southern Song Dynasty are already two-piece rimmed glasses. It is estimated that the beam frame is made of wood and connected with copper hinge hooks and copper wedges. In fact, it is a combination of two single cups with handles.
Kyle polo, a famous Italian tourist, saw China people wearing glasses in the Yuan Dynasty from 127 1 to 1292. At this time, the glasses are probably double ear-hanging glasses with a beam and a forehead rope.
4. Two-piece straight leg stage (Ming and Qing Dynasties).
In the practice of using binocular legless glasses, people think that glasses with strings hanging on their ears are neither beautiful nor convenient. Smart glasses craftsmen put two straight legs on both sides of the double frame, and double straight leg glasses were born. China people traditionally use bronze and brass as the beams, frames and legs of glasses, with two temples attached to both sides of their foreheads. The development of glasses has made a leap.
This stage has gone through four stages: straight leg stage of two joints, straight leg stage of two joints, stage of two joints and legs, and stage of two complete frames, joints and legs.
Ming Jiajing (1522- 1566) Lang Ying's "Seven Manuscripts" says: "I heard that noble people have glasses, studied in their later years, and once saw fine print, I am sincere to the world."
Sun (1626- 16 1), a China optical instrument manufacturer, pioneered the optometry method of "following the eyes to the mirror", expanded the perspective magnifying glass to 72 kinds of lenses, and developed lenses with various luminosity according to people's age and vision by using the refraction principle of convex and concave mirrors. During the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, another famous glasses technician in Suzhou, Zhu Sanshan, inherited and carried forward Sun's mirror-making technology, and the glasses manufacturing industry rose in Suzhou, making Suzhou a famous glasses producing area in China and greatly developing the mirror-making industry in China. Up to now, there are still "Sanshan" Tongliang brand glasses among the people. The author thinks that the two-piece curved leg glasses in China were probably invented by Sun. During the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, China's gold and silver thread "first-line beam" double-piece soft-legged glasses have been produced.
5. Two-piece leg bending stage (Qing, Republic of China, modern).
Two-piece straight leg glasses are easy to slide off when in use, which is inconvenient to take and wear, so our country's mirror technicians have created two-piece curved leg glasses. The earliest two-legged glasses were copper I-beams, round or oval frames and two copper wire bent legs, and later they were developed into two double-beam nose-mounted two-legged glasses and two nose-supported two-legged glasses. At this point, the glasses have matured.
After the founding of New China, China's glasses industry developed rapidly, and glasses frames gradually shifted to metal and nonmetal frames (cellophane, plastic, plate, etc.). ). After the reform and opening up, glasses developed rapidly, and various brand-name glasses came out one after another, which pushed the development of two-piece curved leg glasses to a new height.
Lens is the core component of glasses. The change and course of material selection of spectacle lenses reflects the development of spectacle optics and the change of spectacle quality, and has experienced the development from natural materials to synthetic materials. From natural spar and shrimp shell to melt processing feed, glass, plastic, resin, bisulfite gel polymer, etc. From external mirror to contact lens, its course is long.
The transmittance and quality of lenses have developed from uneven density, poor transmittance and poor ultraviolet and infrared protection to a new stage of uniform density, good transmittance, excellent optical performance, high protection rate, light weight and non-fragile.
The lenses in China before the Ming Dynasty were mainly natural crystals. Most of the previous glass was imported from Europe. After the Qing Dynasty, with the development of china glass's industry, optical glass lenses appeared and gradually became the main material of glasses. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, China's optical materials have developed rapidly, and the market share of modern lenses such as resin has increased year by year, with broad prospects.
The contribution of glasses to human society is enormous, and its "small" implies the "big" of the world. Both emperors and generals and ordinary people generally need glasses to help them when they reach a certain age. With the help of glasses, many famous politicians, militarists, scientists, writers, musicians and artists at all times and all over the world have made historic decisions, commanded decisive major battles, created wonderful inventions, written masterpieces handed down from generation to generation, composed touching movements and painted touching pictures. In China, glasses have relieved the suffering of 300 million people with visual impairment. After the principle of glasses is applied to modern scientific instruments, it miraculously pushes human progress to a new era. Its contribution to mankind goes back to ancient times and benefits future generations.
In a word, we can draw such a conclusion from the development of glasses: the earliest people who used glasses in the world were from China; The first lens in the world was made of a crystal stone mill; The earliest glasses in the world are single-plate sunshade (eye-catching) glasses; The first person in the world who discovered the medical value of glasses was from China. The earliest people in the world who made primitive contact lenses came from China. The glasses with gold lenses for the first time in the world were made in China-it can be called "the originator of world frames".