Bifocals: Thank you, Ben Franklin

Sometimes, you have to see things from more than one point of view.

That was the case with Benjamin Franklin, who needed two pairs of glasses in order to function.

See, Franklin had rather bad eyesight. He wore glasses nearly all of his life. He came to be known as the man with the spectacles and the quick wit. He uttered all these pithy sayings and capture them in a book (or Almanack). He was an adventuresome chap who liked to see the world and spent many years in France, England, and other places in Europe. He also spent much of his time figuring out why things were the way they were and then improving on them.

This was definitely the case with his eyeglasses. Eventually, Franklin needed two pairs of glasses – one to see things up close and the other to see things far away. Under the conventions of the time (meaning that's what had been invented), people with such eyesight difficulties were forced to switch back and forth between two sets of eyeglasses, each with a different prescription. Franklin changed all that, inventing what we now call bifocals.

One of Benjamin Franklin's many famous sayings is this one: "Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late." He did manage to get old too soon, before other more exciting things were invented to stimulate his own love of invention and inquiry. But he certainly wasn't wise too late. On the contrary, he spent his whole life being wise. And his bifocals helped bring everything into focus.