Split The Difference

Benjamin Franklin, like many older people had issues with his eyes. In order to efficiently function, he needed two pair of glasses…one for closeup and one for distance. It is an irritation felt by many people as they get older. Of course, these days we already have things like cataract surgery, contact lenses, and bifocal glasses, but in Benjamin Franklin’s day, these things didn’t exist, and even eye care was scarce. Doctors didn’t have the equipment we have for diagnosis and correction that we have today. This was the place of frustration Franklin found himself in, and the motivation he felt for change.

So, he set to work, and in a letter dated May 23, 1785, Benjamin Franklin revealed his design for what we would eventually know as bifocal glasses. Benjamin Franklin was many things. He was a Pennsylvania inventor, printer, author, diplomat and American Founding Father, and he had grown tired of alternating between these two different pairs of glasses to help his near or far vision. He was so tired of it, in fact that he came up with an idea to, quite literally, split the difference, and with that Benjamin Franklin became widely credited as the inventor of bifocal glasses. It was an invention that was almost mor for himself than for anyone else, but that definitely helped millions if not billions of people.

Benjamin Franklin was more than a scientist. He was also a politician and diplomat, famous for signing both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and if those things were all he did in life, we would likely have considered him a great man. Nevertheless, his curious, scientific mind would not let him stop there. He went on to invent many other things, among them the Lightning Rod, Bifocal Glasses, the Franklin Stove, the Odometer, the Glass Harmonica, the Flexible Urinary Catheter, the Long Arm, Hand Paddles, the Phonetic Alphabet, and one that people aren’t sure is a good thing or a bad thing…Daylight Saving Time.

In the letter to his friend George Whatley, a London merchant and pamphleteer, Benjamin Franklin included a sketch of his new invention, saying that he found the bifocals particularly useful while dining in France. He stated that with the glasses, he could see both the food he was eating and the facial expressions of people seated across the table, which helped him better interpret their words, which was crucial for a diplomat navigating a foreign country. His letter stated, “I therefore had formerly two pair of spectacles, which I shifted occasionally, as in travelling I sometimes read, and often wanted to regard the prospects. Finding this change troublesome…I had the glasses cut, and half of each kind associated in the same circle. By this means, as I wear my spectacles constantly, I have only to move my eyes up or down, as I want to see distinctly far or near, the proper glasses being always ready.” It was ingenious!!

The bifocal sketch came the year after Franklin made a special request to his optician, “Slice in half the lenses of his reading glasses and long-distance glasses, then combine them together with the distance lenses on top and reading glasses on the bottom. Franklin called the glasses style ‘double spectacles,’ later known as bifocals.” Oddly, Franklin was not an inventor that was interested in making money from his inventions, and so, like with his other inventions Franklin did nothing more that present the idea and let someone else basically run with it. He only wanted his bifocal breakthrough to help other members of the community struggling with vision deterioration. For that reason, Benjamin Franklin never patented any of his inventions and was instead intent only on sharing them freely…unlike most inventors of that time or this.