Note 2 — JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON

Eye-glasses were a somewhat new invention when Petrarch resorted to them. Poggendorf (Geschichte der Physik, pp. 93 sqq.) cites the first reference to them (1299), which reads as follows: "I found myself so oppressed by age that without the so-called eye-glasses, which have recently been discovered as a godsend to poor old persons, I could neither read nor write." We know little of the construction of these first spectacles. An early German painting (15th century), in the National Gallery at London, shows a saint with a completely developed pince-nez.