Chicken or Egg (Print Press vs. Glasses)

[poultry_admin]

Which was there first?
Print Press (with movable/re-usable letters)
vs.
Glasses

(No Google)

[poultry_admin]

Ha! gotcha!
Ok, maybe not. This depends on how you define Glasses.
If they have to be the style with two lenses on the bridge of the nose AND temple arms, then it's around 1730 and well after the print press.
If you are like me and you are defining glasses as two glasses in front of the eyes then we are at between 1268 and 1300 and well before the print press. Those glasses had a frame, but you had to hold them and were for near sighted people only.

Romans (specifically the mentor of Nero by the name of Seneca) claimed to have used glass bowls filled with water to read the books in the library. Around the year 1000 Venice used the first solid glass pieces for magnification.
Early 16th century they invented the convex glass for Pope Leo X. Now they can correct near- and farsightedness.
Then the Spanish added silk loops to the nose pincer style glasses to hold them on better. The loops went around the ears. The Chinese scoffed at that idea when it was introduced to them and just used a single band with a weight to hold them over the ear.
Bifocals came around 1780.

[Farrier1987]

You bring up the Chinese. I would expect they had both long before the west.

[poultry_admin]

Not sure if all in this article is correct, but I went with this one:
https://www.zennioptical.com/blog/history-eyeglasses/

others:
https://www.framesdirect.com/knowledge- ... filiate=73
https://www.zeiss.ca/vision-care/en_ca/ ... acles.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasses

All seem to agree that Chinese didn't have corrective glasses until the 15th century after they were imported from Europe. Also, there are other sites out there discussing that the Chinese didn't even have Glass until about that time.

That's kind of hard to believe for me as well.

[poultry_admin]

I kept looking for chinese inventions. Found this nice list and again am assuming that it's correct. Glass is not on there!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_C ... inventions