Reading Glasses

Jan van Eyck
had some issues as well.

As I get older, I find myself needing reading glasses.  This happens to, oh, nearly everyone as we age, due to presbyopia.

Being nearsighted, I've worn glasses for the past thirty years. It was only in the past year I've needed (horrors!) multifocals.

Now, multifocals are good for everyday use and casual glancing at the back of a cereal box.  But for voracious readers and musicians (ie me), they can be quite bothersome.  The change of prescription across a lense causes a funny wavery wobble to anything textual.

So I got a second pair of single-vision lenses for playing the piano and reading.

What a boon!  Now all I have to do to be able to read sheet music or a trade paperback was swap glasses.

Reading glasses have been around for centuries.  Originally, that's what they were for--reading.  Since most people didn't do much reading, most people did not bother with spectacles.  Those who did have them did not sport them continuously, but treated them as tools, worn and used only when perusing texts.

But some people wore them enough to be pictured with them in the 1830's.

Do you wear glasses or contact lenses?  Do you have a pair of glasses just for reading?
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Her Grace is a voracious reader who needs glasses to read properly, possibly because of her habit of holding books with her feet. An eReader has changed that, in that resizeable text has eliminated the need for glasses and she can now easily turn the pages with a toe.