Wearers of Adaptive Eyewear can make their own prescriptions. The lenses are plastic bladders that change shape and corrective power with a small syringe. So far 30,000 people who may never be reached by an optician or afford conventional eyeglasses now have corrected vision. Recipients are now able to read, mend fishing nets, sew, and perform other tasks requiring good eyesight. The inventor, Oxford University professor Josh Silver, hopes his nonprofit organization can begin manufacturing and distributing up to 100 million pairs a year.
posted by ardgedee on Dec 30, 2008 - 14 comments

A selection of eyeglasses for $8. (That's including your lens prescription.) Or if that's not to your liking, there's $39.
posted by Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson on Sep 19, 2007 - 81 comments

Eyeglasses Warehouse: Vintage Eyeglasses and Antique Spectacles.
posted by hama7 on Apr 13, 2004 - 5 comments

"Rad, wicked, bad, barry, and definitely not sad". Amazingly, James Runcie is talking about glasses. He also describes his own endearing misadventures with NHS specs and how he's changed his opinion from glasses as stigmata (used by "the shy, the gangly, the awkward; people whose voices had not yet broken; the pyromaniacs, the mummy missers, and worst of all, the people who actually liked classical music") to the joy of myopia ("we look in a concentrated manner or not at all, for we cannot bear very much reality"). As to Dorothy Parker's famous dictum, the obsessive, often unsafe for work BBS and links on eyescene should offer some evidence to the contrary.
posted by 111 on Feb 19, 2003 - 12 comments

How many instances of 'Gee Whiz' can you fit on your hard drive? With cameras mounted on eyeglass frames, he suggests, we can document every moment of our lives and create a second-by-second digital diary. "There won't be any reason ever to forget anything anymore," he says. Vannevar Bush had a similar idea 50 years ago, though in that era the promising storage medium was microfilm rather than magnetic disks.

Hate to parrot /. But this article was just way too fascinating to pass up not sharing it with any of you no-slashdot readers.
posted by crasspastor on Apr 18, 2002 - 9 comments

"World's largest and most complete private collection of eyeglasses" Galleria Guglielmo Tabacchi in Padua, Italy, with objects dating back to " ..1285, when glasses were first created in Venice...". Check out Elton John's shades in Celebrities - he too belongs in the 13th century.
posted by Voyageman on Mar 14, 2002 - 2 comments

Attenion hipsters! Your vintage eyeglass frames are only a click away.
posted by mathowie on Aug 5, 1999 - 1 comment