4 ms·

I came upon the Harrods 1912 catalog. Its interesting browse the catalog for what was available back then. https://archive.org/details/harrods-for-everything-i

• epiccoleman 1y ago
  This led me down a pleasing rabbit hole: * flipping through the pages I stopped with some interest on section for the "Optical Department" (page 84) * I noticed the pince-nez glasses, and wondered "does pince-nez just mean 'pinch nose'? * looked up pince-nez on Wikipedia[1], sure enough, pince-nez means "pinch nose". * there is an interesting section in this article about early glasses [2] * A citation in this section leads to "Renaissance vision from spectacles to telescopes," (p. 167) helpfully archived on the Internet Archive [3] * paging through this book leads to a "fairly complete description of horn frame making in a Florentine carnival song of the early sixteenth century." [4] (p.171) And finally, this "Florentine carnival song" has the following verse: > Because they are made by > necromantic artifice and the planets > of Mercury, Jupiter and Mars, > herbal juices and very secret, > they make men wise > when they use these spectacles. I had no idea of the necromantic powers I was invoking by wearing glasses! Thanks for the fun diversion! --- [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pince-nez https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pince-nez [2]: > The earliest form of eyewear for which any archaeological record exists comes from the middle of the 15th century. It is a primitive pince-nez... [3]: https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_peIL7hVQUmwC/page/n167/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_peIL7hVQUmwC/page/n167/mo... [4]: https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_peIL7hVQUmwC/page/n171/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_peIL7hVQUmwC/page/n171/mo...