Every morning millions of people reach for their eyeglasses even before getting out of bed.  With the world in focus, their day can begin. Nonetheless the history of eyeglasses remains blurry even if with a strong Italian connection from Ancient Rome to this day.

So, it’s no wonder a feature article, “The Power of Big Ideas” published in Newsweek on January 11, 1999, reported that reading glasses, Gutenberg’s printing press, and the atomic bomb, had changed the course of history more than all inventions during the last 2,000 years. Of course, that was before the internet.