How do glasses help you see?

You’ve asked this at a very good time because more and more people are needing to wear glasses, including young children, and we don’t really know why.
                                                 

Our eyes let us see because light enters each eye, and the eye then creates a message that goes to the brain.

The eyeball itself doesn’t actually “see” – the brain sees. The eyeballs just take pictures, like two little cameras. To see properly, each eyeball needs to send the light that enters it onto a very exact spot inside the eyeball, called the retina. If the light falls onto the wrong place, your vision will be blurry.

Many people don’t need glasses and can see just fine. This is because their eyeballs are focusing light properly onto the retina.

However, some people have eyeballs that are too long. They are called “shortsighted”. For these people, things far away, like street signs or the classroom blackboard, can look blurry.

Other people have eyeballs that are too short. They are called “farsighted” and things close to them, like a book or a mobile phone, can look blurry.

Both shortsighted and farsighted people need glasses to help them see clearly.

They work by helping the eyeball to focus light onto the correct place, the retina. Only then can the eye see clearly.

Maybe you have a grandma or grandpa who wears glasses whenever they are reading books or using their mobile phone. When people get older, they usually become a little bit farsighted because a part of their eye called the lens becomes stiff and doesn’t work properly.

More and more young people in the world are needing to wear glasses.

We’re not sure why, but some scientists think that children who spend too much time inside are more likely to need glasses. We don’t know if it’s because they aren’t getting enough sunlight or if they’re simply reading too much or playing too many video games when they get home.

Oakley EVZero Range vs. Smith Optics Attack Max sunglass review

One could be forgiven for thinking the Smith Optics Attack Max and Oakley EVZero Range were penned by the same designer. Although they’ve obviously not identical, both use a frameless design and a large-format lens with a raised center for maximum coverage. And just as Oakley does with its Prizm lens technology, Smith Optics claims its ChromaPop lens tints provide better color clarity and detail definition than a more conventional lens.
                                           

On the bike, both provide similarly expansive fields of view, along with superb protection from flying debris, wind, and rain. I could barely see the edges of the lens on either set, and even at 80km/h, my eyes didn’t water from wind irritation. Both sunglasses are fantastically lightweight — 32g for the Attack Max, the EVZero Range even lighter at just 23g — and combined with the similarly gentle fit on my relatively narrow head, it doesn’t take long to forget that you’re wearing them at all.

But there’s no getting around the fact that Oakley only offers the road cycling-specific Prizm lens in a single version, and as good as it is most of the time, the 20% light transmission rating isn’t going to work all the time. Here in the high-altitude sunshine of the Colorado Rockies, for example, Prizm sometimes just isn’t as dark as I’d like. There’s still the same awesome level of contrast, but almost too much of it — sort of like a top-shelf sound system that’s turned up a little too loud.

Oakley may offer the EVZero in versions to suit nearly any lighting condition (and don’t forget those five different lens shapes), but the lenses can’t be swapped after the fact since the temples are permanently fixed in place. The Attack Max, on the other hand, has a clever magnetic clasp setup that still allows for a frameless design, but also the ability to change lenses at will. The standard ChromaPop Sun Red Mirror lens of my test set is noticeably better in bright sunlight with its darker 15% transmission rating, and Smith Optics further hammers the point home by also including a ChromaPop Contrast Rose lens with a much lighter 48% tint that works well in lower-light conditions.

State Optical takes aim at Warby Parker with Chicago-branded glasses made in the USA

A Chicago start-up wants to ride the trendy eye-wear movement — with luxury spectacles designed and assembled in the U.S.A.
                                           

State Optical, co-founded by Scott Shapiro, Jerry Wolowicz, Marc Franchi and Jason Stanley, launched in early 2016 to tap into what they saw as a growing demand for domestic products.

Smartly dressed with a pair of his own State frames in gray, Shapiro said the company set up in Chicago to tell an authentic brand story. The brand heavily promotes the city's iconography, and features the Chicago skyline on its presentation boxes.

Indeed, frame designs are all named after streets in Chicago, such as Armitage and Ravenswood. Each frame has 21 precision drilled holes set in the temples, a homage to Illinois being the 21st state of America.

While some of the materials are still sourced from overseas (Italian acetate and hinges from Germany), all the manufacturing is done in the U.S.

According to Shapiro, that created some difficulties: Many American craftsmen had not seen a frame being made before. "Fundamentally it's going to be more difficult and expensive to manufacture in the U.S.," said Shapiro. "The cost of labor is higher even now between the U.S. and China."

Still, Shapiro insisted domestic manufacturing gives State an advantage in the quality of its eyewear. By producing the frames in the U.S., Shapiro said, the company can spot quality or production issues and correct them early.

Snap fails to sell its overhyped ‘Spectacles’ video glasses

In news that surprises few people outside the company, Snap Inc. has been unable to sell its “Spectacles” video glasses, and it’s stuck with hundreds of thousands of unsold units, according to a report published Monday.
                                                   

The Information delivered the news, citing “two people close to the company” as saying that the company, formerly known as Snapchat, had “grossly overestimated demand,” and was sitting on “hundreds of thousands of unsold units sitting in warehouses, either fully assembled or in parts.”

Where the report gets interesting is that Snap itself claimed nearly three weeks ago that the product had “exceeded expectations” in selling 150,000 units. It said it was working on a second generation of Spectacles that could incorporate augmented reality technology.

Despite such apologists, such as a reviewer at USA Today — who actually said, “The video is sketchy, but so what?” — problems with the glasses emerged not long after they were launched. Along with being reportedly terrible in low light, the glasses were also said to fail at nearly every other aspect they were designed for, including smartphone syncing, battery life and video quality.

But perhaps the most important and often overlooked part of the product by tech reviewers was the most obvious one: Wearing them makes you look like … well, let’s just say that they’re the worst-looking thing you could put on your face since Google Glass.

The company went public in February on a reduced valuation, disclosing in its initial public offering prospectus that it may never be profitable. Squandering millions on ugly, dysfunctional video glasses liked by no one outside Los Angeles, if anywhere, appears to make that assertion look like more of a promise.

These concept smart glasses let you control your phone by scratching your nose

Using a phone or smartwatch when you’re supposed to be talking to someone has become an accepted rudeness in the 21st century. So, a group of researchers have a possible solution to this minor societal ill: prototype smart glasses that let you control a computer just by rubbing your nose. Yes, you can reject a call, pause a video, or skip a song, simply by scratching your schnoz.
                                               

They aren’t (sadly) available to buy right now, or we’d all be wandering the streets, pawing at our noses like coked-up advertising execs. The glasses were designed as an experiment by researchers from South Korea’s KAIST University, the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and Georgia Tech in the US, to create a way to “control a wearable computer without calling attention to the user in public.”

The specs work thanks to a trio of electrooculography (or EOG) sensors embedded in the bridge and nosepads of the frame, which measure the electric potential of the surrounding flesh. These types of sensors are usually used to record eye activity for doctors, but have also found their way into the film industry as a method of re-creating realistic eye movements in CGI.

The system — delightfully dubbed ItchyNose — could be used to minimize social awkwardness when using wearable computers, says researcher Hui-Shyong Yeo. He has in mind the sort of device that might be worn directly in front of the eyes. Indeed, Google Glass had a similar-ish control system, using swipes down the side of the frame as an input.