Invention Playlist 4: Sun Glasses

Shades didn't invent themselves. Robert and Joe explore their origins...

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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the fourth Dot Org brought to you by the United
States Fourth Service and the AD Council. Hey, welcome to Invention.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Robert,

(02:06):
what kind of sunglasses do you wear? Well? Currently? My
son is six years old, So I've been going through
a spell here where I can really only wear whatever
kind of semi garbage swag sunglasses come my way, you know,
with various brand names plastered to the side of them,
because inevitably, especially when he was younger, my son would

(02:27):
have to get his hands on whatever kind of sunglasses
I had in the car, So the sunglasses get smudged,
sunglasses get scratched up, sunglasses get broken or just lost.
And I was pretty good at losing sunglasses even before
he came into my life. Uh So I'm hoping that
I'm working up to very soon reaching that point where
I can actually buy a decent pair of sunglasses that

(02:50):
will protect my eyes. Did you ever actually wear those
company sunglasses we got? I have likes of them, like
fold in half at the nose is Yeah. I I
got those immediately. But mainly I I thought to myself,
this is a great decoy brand because my son is
gonna love like the Transformer s qualities of these sunglasses
here break that one. Yeah, but I've ended up wearing

(03:12):
them around anyway. So that's my story. Hopefully, by the
time I'm ready to actually get some decent sunglasses, we'll
have some like back to the future to sunglasses, you know,
like the ones that you've got as a prize, uh
Pizza Hut back in the day when that film first
came out. Except now these will be legit future sunglasses.
You know. I was trying to think before we decided
to do this episode, our sunglasses an invention or not?

(03:35):
Did they count? Yeah? They count? I guess everything is
an invention. Were we born with sunglasses? Well we'll get
into that, but yeah, it is difficult for us to
imagine a time before sunglasses. How did Corey Hart keep
track of the visions in his eyes? I don't know
how did rowdy roddy Piper see through the alien conspiracy?
I guess I don't know. He didn't how to terminate

(03:57):
or cover up his eye damage. That's a good point, really,
how did anyone ever in the history of Earth managed
to look cool at any given moment, much less shade
their eyes from the vicious light of day. It's already
telling that all the examples you point to our cultural
ones you're pointing, You're pointing to movies and stuff, rather
than talking about how would I get through my life
without sunglasses? Well that this is going to be an

(04:19):
important part there, just the iconography of the sunglasses, and
that will be more important later on in our discussion,
but in their their psychological effects example in that, but
initially here you know, we're we're we're complicating the purpose
of the sunglasses by basically the whole deal is the
sun is bright. I disagree, And while our eyelids do

(04:40):
give us the ability to manipulate the amount of sunlight
hitting our eyeballs, it also pays to have other options.
And certainly we have the ability to look away from
the sun, to hide from the sun, or to raise
a hand or a forearm to block it. But that's
dependent largely on say your environment. Like some environments are
much brighter than others. What if you live in a

(05:02):
place where, say it's springtime, and you're in a place
with snow cover. The sun can be so bright in
those cases because it's not only coming from above, but
reflecting off of the snow, that you essentially cannot use
your eyes in the environment, right, because otherwise you can't
just shade where a hat you need to wear, like
a hat with two bills right, one on top, one

(05:22):
at the bottom. Um, it's coming from all directions, and
you need to use your hands for other things. You're
an individual, will need to hunt or fish or craft, etcetera.
And you can't just go around with your hands up
all the time. Um. When I when I think about
the challenges of dealing with sunlight, and I'm always forced

(05:42):
to just think about how amazing our eyelids are though
for manipulating light well, and our iris is. Of course,
our pupils contract when there's too much light, but there's
a point at which they can't contract anymore, and you
have to depend on the eyelids. One one example I
always go to is there's a character in Larry McMurtry's
novel Comanche Moon, and he he winds up tortured by

(06:07):
bandit flares and they slice his eyelids off. They leave
him for for dead in the sun, and he's you know,
half driven mad by the whole whole ordeal but sick eyelids.
Oh yeah, it is a It is a sick, weird book. Um,
I love it. It's my favorite McMurtry book. But afterwards,
this character ends up constructing a pair of special sunglasses

(06:29):
for himself with these varying, um varying levels of darkness,
so that he can just click through them as he
needs them, depending on where he is, if he's a
you know, indoors outdoors, bright day, uh, you know, cloudy day, etcetera.
But I always come back to that because it's like, yeah,
have you had to recreate the functionality of your eyelids?

(06:51):
What kind of invention would you have to have to build?
You got so many parts of your body that you
really don't appreciate but would if they were gone. Right,
But enough about Larry mertris cyborg westerns. Uh, let's let's
just get down to sunglasses. Was what is essential? To
a modern pair of sunglasses. What do you What do
you need is we're sort of deconstructing the the invention. Well,

(07:12):
you need a frame to hold them over the eyes,
and you need lenses that will, in one way or
another filter the incoming light. They obviously can't be completely opaque.
You need to be able to see through them, but
they also need to stop some amount of bad stuff
from getting in right. So, like from from a material level,
it seems pretty straightforward. Um, you know, glass itself is

(07:35):
a rather old invention. We could and we can revisit
glass at some point in the future episode. But you
find examples of this in ancient Mesopotamia. Uh. Certainly crystals
and other substances were known to ancient people. So just
the materials of say building something out of six we
can all imagine the sort of flint stones style UH

(07:55):
spectacles or sunglasses that one could conceivably have. But in
then Chin is always about that moment where someone actually
puts materials together and and create something that has not
existed before. So we're forced to just to ask that question, well,
where do we really see the earliest indications of UH
to all to a certain extent, spectacles. We can't talk

(08:17):
about sunglasses without talking about spectacles a little bit. But
we're mostly concerned with sunglasses in this episode because they
look cooler right focusing lenses. That that's the story for
another time, where I think we're dealing with a somewhat
simpler story right now. Yes, even though sunglasses might not
have become extremely popular around the world until after spectacles

(08:37):
were widely used. But it's really too bad because they're
they're they're sunglasses esfecially are modern usage of them. They're
they're they're really important. They really protect us. Well, think
about the sunglasses you wear as a kind of radiation
suit for your eyes. I think on that one for
a second. Try try to actually cognize the fact that
good old fashioned sunlight is literally radiation from a star.

(09:00):
That's a phrase that always echoes in my mind when
it's really beaten down on my head um. And a
good pair of sunglasses should do multiple things right. They
should decrease the intensity of the light reaching your eyes.
So if it's a bright, shining day, or there's glare
off of water or off of a reflective surface or something,
you need light to reach your eyes in order to see,
but you don't need so much of it. And when

(09:21):
the number of lumens in your surroundings exceed what your
eyes need in order to see, your iris muscles contract,
they shrink your pupil the shutter of your eye, and
that admits less in. But eventually your pupils can't contract anymore,
and then you have to try to limit more light
by squinting your eyelids. But eventually you run into problems there. Right,
Sometimes it's so bright that's squinting becomes difficult, or you

(09:44):
know you you you're squinting so much you want to
completely close your eyes. Now, the other thing that's important
for sunglasses to do is decrease or eliminate ultra violet
radiation when when that's coming at your eyes. Now, there's
really no benefit to getting ultraviolet radiation in your eyes.
Whereas you need the visible light that comes in from

(10:05):
the sun in order to see your surroundings, you don't
really need UV light at all. And so if sunglasses
can reduce or even completely eliminate UV exposure to your eyes,
that's a good thing, because your eyes can be injured
by U V exposure. But as we were saying earlier, Also,
let's not ignore the fact that sunglasses are a very
profound style choice and play a psychological and cultural role

(10:26):
as well. I think people often wear sunglasses as much
for style and psychological reasons as they do for uh,
for reducing glare and reducing UV exposure. In any event,
you're gonna want a good pair of sunglasses before you
go out to, say, a sporting event, right for a
number of reasons, because it's you're your outdoors and it
may be very bright. Uh. And then it's also a

(10:47):
social engagement. You know, you wanna look cool uh to
the other fans or their friends and family that have
traveled there with you. In the case of the dude,
you can't go bowling without sunglasses exactly. Uh. So for
our first historical journey, in our attempt to understand sunglasses
of old, let's go back to the ancient Romans. Let's

(11:10):
go to the Colosseum. Now, this, I think is actually
going to be a false example, but it's something that's
interesting that sometimes gets cited in this context. So we're
gonna go to our old friend Plenty of the Elder
first century CE Roman writer in his Natural History, translated
by John Bostock. Plenty is discussing in in book thirty
seven of his Natural history quote the Natural History of

(11:32):
Precious Stones, and he comes to a section on what
he calls Smaragdes. I could have sworn that was one
of the one of the raith kings in the Lord
of the Rings, Uh saga, But I don't think so.
Which anniversary gift is smaragdes? I can ever remember? It's
like it's like wood but ivory Smaragdes. Right. So, samur

(11:54):
agnes appears to be a term used for green precious stones,
for barrel stones like emerald, or for jasper stones. Uh.
And he so he seems to be talking about emeralds.
I think that's the way it's most often translated. And
Plenty dwells for a while on how beautiful the emerald
is and how RESTful to the eye, how soothing to
look upon quote. Even when the vision has been fatigued

(12:16):
with intently viewing other objects, it is refreshed by being
turned upon this stone. And lapidaries know of nothing that
is more gratefully soothing to the eyes. It's soft green
tints being wonderfully adapted for assuaging lassitude when felt in
those organs. By those organs, I think he means eyes.

(12:36):
But anyway, getting to to the part that's often cited
as as emerald sunglasses, but actually it appears to not be,
he writes, quote, when the surface of the sami agdus
is flat, it reflects the image of objects in the
same manner as a mirror. The Emperor Nero used to
view the combats of the gladiators upon a sami agdus

(12:57):
upon a smaragdus ban key here perhaps right. So this
would have been the first century CE, and it's been
cited as an early use of tinted transparencies in the sun.
The idea that Nero was maybe watching the net fighters
and the pursuers the secuteurs through Jim's like lenses. So
just I guess try to imagine he's holding emeralds over
his eyes and looking through them like lenses to filter

(13:19):
out some of the glare. I think I also saw
an artistic interpretation of this, where you see the you know,
the the portly emperor. They're all in his finery and
he's holding up something that looks like it's almost like
opera uh binoculars, you know, except it's just one emerald
that he's holding up to his eye. I'm thinking with

(13:40):
the green and that image you're describing, this has got
to be the inspiration for David Lynch's depiction of Baron
Harconan in his adaptation of Dune. Oh does he have
an emerald? Well, everything's green around. It's like his his
rooms are green. He's got this green environment. He's kind
of a Nero like figure. But anyway, the reason I
said this was a false choices because it sounds to

(14:02):
me like in the context Plenty meant that Nero if
this story is even true. Watched the fights as reflected
in the surface of the sami Agnodus like a mirror,
because he was just talking about how it reflects like
a mirror, and this would still have probably some some
like sun dampening effect, right. I just try to imagine
something reflected an emerald. It's not going to be reflected

(14:23):
in a blinding way. But so he's looking at that
since the emerald reflects less light than the source provides.
I was looking at a text titled The Origin and
Development of Spectacles by C. J. S. Thompson, and this
is an older texas is from seven but he also
mentions the Nero story, and he definitely argued too that
it was probably a case where Nero just liked to

(14:43):
watch the festivities colored green um which you know via
the Emerald, and that he gained no sun shading from it.
And yeah, I think my suspicion here is that based
on some recent research we did for stuff to build
your mind about gladiatorial combat for our episode on the
Trident Um, you know there there was if you're a

(15:04):
fan of both the sort of the sporting combat of
of the gladiatorial spectacle as well as like the drama
and all these other ridiculous aspects of it, you're gonna
be you might you might gain something from looking out
at this combat between men dressed as fish men using
nautical weapons and then adding a green overlay on that. UM.

(15:28):
I could see where where the green tent could perhaps
be be helpful in that that particular mode of entertainment.
What you're saying is taking on a decidedly lynchy and vibe.
I I think I think the connection is there now.
Thompson also points out that while the Romans certainly suffered
from eye problems and had their own treatments for those ailments,

(15:49):
there's no mention in the work of say Celsus of
artificial site aids. He mentioned that in writings prior to
the thirteenth century, one finds only occasional mentions of magnifying classes.
So the use of some sort of a lens to
uh look at find our details, or perhaps you know,
holding it up to a text. But uh, you don't

(16:11):
see mention of spectacles. By the way. He also wrote
that there was no evidence that lenses were known to
the ancient Egyptians or the Hebrews. However, we do have
a very early magnifying glass, or depending on who you ask,
perhaps a fire starting glass, something that you used to
refract the rays of the sun, you know, to start
a small fire, you know, the kind of thing that

(16:32):
children may sometimes do when trying to burn ants, hopefully
not to ants, hopefully not, I mean, and you know
one has to be careful. But at any rate, this
particular lens, the Nimrod lens, is a three thousand year
old crystal unearthed in eighteen fifty by Austin Henry, layered
in the Syrian Palace of Nimrod. However, we were also

(16:55):
not sure it might have simply been a decorative element,
it might not have been used. Uh and in any right,
it's not tinted. Okay, so we're not talking about sunglasses, right,
but we are talking about like a crystal that may
have been that people may have looked through. Now you
have to ask you the question, like to what extent
did they just look through it because it was cool?
Like what's more mystical than holding up some sort of

(17:18):
you know, gleaming crystal even if it's clear, and watching
how the world is distorted ever so slightly. Now, another
thing that's worth noting is that we've been talking about
lenses and tinted lenses, but obviously people came up with
ways of protecting their eyes from the sun, uh, having
accessories beyond just their hands and their eyelids and stuff

(17:39):
to protect their eyes from the sun long before there
were there were tinted glass or plastic lenses or anything
for example, hats and umbrellas. That's obvious, yeah, But a
much more ingenious and much more interesting one is what
I want to mention the Inuit, and you pick people's
of the northern circumpolar regions today, Canada, allow Aska, Greenland

(18:00):
and Russia have for centuries made these ingenious devices known
as snow goggles. Yes, and and I want to come
back to what we said earlier about lumens before we
get into this, because I think this really drives home
the necessity that led to the invention. Uh So, in
an indoor environment, a human is typically typically going to
encounter four hundred, six hundred lumens. That's the intensity of

(18:24):
the light um and our comfortable level four loomens, it's
it's going to go up to round thirty five hundred.
If you're in the shade on a sunny day, you're
probably encountering around a thousand lumens sunny day out on
say a highway or other reflective surface. You know, we
all know what it's like to drive on like a
really sunny day. You almost have to have shades. Uh,
you're probably gonna do with something like six thousand or

(18:45):
more lumens. Uh. Ten thousand loomens is the danger zone
where you really have to start worrying about the health
of your eyes. But a snow field on a sunny day,
you're talking twelve thousand plus lumens. And this is where
you enter the domain of potential snow blindness. Right, And
this is of course because of the reflective power of
white snow right, it can create almost kind of double

(19:08):
sun effect, sun above and sun below being reflected back up.
Whereas you know, a normal patch of ground that's got
say grass or just open soil, might reflect about ten
of the U V ray is coming from the sun.
Snow can reflect not quite a hundred percent, but something
like close to a of it, nearly doubling your UV exposure.

(19:29):
And so if you are, say living in in northern
regions where there's a lot of snow cover, one thing
that works in your favor is that for much of
the year, the sun doesn't get super bright, right, it
doesn't get super high in the sky, doesn't get super direct,
but it will in certain parts of the year where
there is still a lot of snow cover on the ground.
So when you've got those things working together, say bright sun,

(19:50):
heavy snow cover, maybe in the springtime when the sun
is out high in the sky, proper eye protection is
incredibly important. And not just because it's difficult to hunt
or see where you're going when the sun's reflecting off
the white snow and there's blinding glare and everything, but
it's what you mentioned there's this risk of snow blindness,
which is also known as a photocarrotitis. So, as we

(20:11):
mentioned earlier, part of natural sunlight is ultra violet radiation,
and ultra violet radiation can damage the cornea. It can
damage the conjunctiva, the outer surfaces of the eye, just
like it can damage the skin. And this is why
photocarrotitis is often described as something like quote sunburn of
the eye. Symptoms include pain and feeling of having like
irritants or foreign bodies lodged in the eye, tearing up,

(20:34):
swelling and redness, light sensitivity, and sometimes even truly temporary
loss of vision. That's where the blindness comes from. And
so if you need to be doing stuff out in
the snow where the sun is bright, this this is
going to be a problem. And snow goggles fight this
problem with a very smart design. They're typically a carved frame,
usually made from animal bone or walrus tusks, sometimes from driftwood,

(20:59):
or sometimes even from like strange materials like I saw
one that I think was from baleen from a whale,
and uh. This frame fits tight over the eyes so
that light doesn't get in on the sides. Or the top,
and then light is allowed to enter through two very wide,
very narrow slots carved in the middle of the goggles,

(21:19):
which are sometimes darkened on the inside with a material
like soot. And these narrow slits allow the person wearing
them to see without exposing their eyes to too much
glare or UV radiation. And some alternate versions also have
have multiple slits more like like shutter shades or Venetian
blinds or something. They're not unlike the sort of novelty

(21:40):
plastic nineteen eighties sunglasses. You know where they were where
you just had you had no glass, no limbs, shutters,
these slits, yeah, so shutter shapes, which, yeah, you look
at the especially the nineteen eighties versions of these, and
it's easy to just think, this is ridiculous. This is
the this is the sunglasses. This is I wear as
a purely decorative element, and to a certain extent is true.

(22:02):
But they do have a certain functionality as well. Yeah,
and in many ways a highly effective functionality. I mean this,
if you don't have tinted glass to work with, this
is a genius design. Yeah, and and the necessity that
led to it, like like this would this would be
the kind of environment that would necessitate sunglasses UM in
a way that other parts of the world did not. Right.

(22:25):
All right, Well, on that note, let's take a quick break,
and when we come back, we'll discuss some more curios
from the UH the History of Invention UH in regards
to the sunglasses. Today's episode is brought to you by Slack.
Before there was podcast, there was radio. Before that, the stage,

(22:48):
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a show wherever, whenever. However, why should our work be
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(25:00):
Another frequently sided example of of sunglasses or early sunglasses
used uh and involved them not being used to protect
against the sun or perhaps in any way affect vision,
but that they were allegedly used just to hide your
eyes from others. This is this is a crucially important
part of sunglasses. Could not ignore it. I mean, think

(25:22):
of all the times you've worn sunglasses, and there are
times where you wear them to protect your eyes. There
are times when you wear them to to see better
than a high a light intensive environment. There are times
when you do it to look cool. But there are
times when say I've I've warned them, for instance on
the train before uh, even when the train is underground,

(25:43):
because it kind of makes me a little invisible. If
I have my sunglasses on, my my earbuds in, then
I am like less visibly present. Well, you, it means
you can look around the world around you without ever unequipped,
really being caught looking at someone or something. Yeah, it's
a natural human tendency to want to look around and

(26:06):
see who's around you. Like, if you get caught looking
at somebody, that's always awkward, especially if you've got some
kind of social anxiety. You don't you don't want to
like make that eye contact and be like, oh, we
just both looked at each other at the same time, right.
And if you're on the train, sometimes you need to
look at the weird person on the train. And if
you're not wearing sunglasses and you're doing this, that weird
person might be you. It's just a great solution for

(26:29):
everybody involved. So multiple sources report that Chinese judges wore
smokey courts glasses to hide their eye expressions from the
court during the thirteenth century, so this would have been
during the Song Dynasty through twelve seventy nine. So it's
looking around a little bit about this, and Harvard's came

(26:51):
in to wrote the following in nineteen thirty six in
the Introduction of Spectacles into China, which which deals you know,
in large part, was just spectacles in general. And if
we come back and discuss spectacles on the show specifically,
will probably return to this and and other sources. But
he cites Chinese writings that indicated that quote under the

(27:15):
Song dynasty judges in deciding cases in the court used
rock crystal or courts to read illegible legal documents in
the sun. So here the idea seems to be that
they were using them for magnification instead, or perhaps in
addition to um shielding their eyes from other people at

(27:35):
the court. Well, it specifies in the sun, so that
would seem to make it sound like they were trying
to shield their eyes from from glare perhaps, So yeah,
this one. This leaves me confused though as to like
what was actually going on or was it a case where,
for instance, these spectacles were arranged for reading in the
sun or for some sort of magnification purpose, but then

(27:57):
they realized, oh wait, these also shield our eyes, and
it makes a judging a little easier, right, Well, you
can absolutely see how sunglasses would and we'll get more
into the psychological effects later on, but you can see
how sunglasses would be helpful if you were trying to
give the appearance of impartiality. You know, right, if you're
a judge, you want to hide any sign of your

(28:20):
face showing emotion and reaction to arguments or something like that.
I'm not sure that's the reasoning here, but you can
see how it could be right and you still remain
you still retain a portion of your humanity in a
way that you wouldn't if you were wearing say a
hood or an iron mask or some other uh, covering
for your face. Now I looked at another text, Old

(28:42):
Chinese Spectacles by Auto Durham Rasmussen, and there's a discussion
of methods used to grind quote crystal smoky courts in
a variety of rose courts into lenses. And apparently Marco
Polo reported Chinese lenses in twelve seventy stating that people
use lenses of core or semi precious stones to aid

(29:02):
their site. Okay, but here we're still talking about not
just like casual usage among the people, not fashion usage,
but like specialized cases and in some cases seeming to
be some kind of magnifier or site aid, right, Yeah,
and definitely like a premium item that would be used
by a specialist. And in fact it does seem that

(29:23):
also in like Europe, in the United States, tinted glasses
did exist some in the past few centuries, but they
were not widely used and certainly not outside some kind
of corrective or medical context or specialized research context until
the twentieth century, right, Yeah, I mean some classes have
become such a a fashion symbol it is easy to

(29:46):
forget the necessity of them, even if we're not dealing
with just the basic ideas of oh it's like a
super bright day or you're in the middle of a
of a snow field. Because tinted lenses can assist people
with low vision, and they're often prescribed to people with
ocular diseases such as age related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa,

(30:07):
cataract retinopathy, cone dystrophy, and oculo cutaneous albinism. Yeah. I've
also seen references to tinted lenses being recommended for say,
people who were undergoing some of the symptoms of syphilis
or something like that, which makes me wonder if there's
a connection with I have to go to a movie
in in Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula where Gary Oldman is Dracula.

(30:31):
Where's those tinted lenses in the I guess that's supposed
to be the nineteenth century in England. Yeah, I mean,
as I've I've ever read before, there are theories and
this is again just a theory that that brom Stoker
could have had syphilis, and that might have on some
level informed his writing of Dracula. I don't remember him

(30:52):
mentioning tinted spectacles in the book, did he. I do
not recall that being a detail of the book, but
it's definitely there in that movie anyway. It's it's interesting,
it's an interesting choice. Whyever Coppola did it? Um. But
for modern sunglasses, it's hard to say that they were
actually exactly invented at any particular time, because we, as

(31:12):
we mentioned, various kinds of shaded or tinted lenses had
existed for a while for various specialized uses. It wasn't
until the nineteen twenties I think, really when commercial sunglasses
and tinted goggles for driving often really became popular, and
then especially it seems in the nineteen thirties when commercially
produced sunglasses became popular in the in the United States

(31:35):
due to there being a fashion item worn by the
rich and the glamorous. Now, if we want to focus
briefly on the idea of how sunglasses actually work, I
feel like you can. You can take a couple of
approaches here. You can go the very simple route or
you can go the incredibly tedious route, right, and how
do we how do we avoid those two? Well we can.

(31:56):
I think what we'll do is we'll try to We'll
try and hit the high notes here, Okay, hands and
just remind everybody if you want a more in depth
discussion of how sunglasses work, there's actually a how stuff
works article, How sunglasses work. Oddly enough, that's the title
of the article. That's a pretty good one. Yeah, and
it's it's a pretty it is a pretty good one.
It takes you through a lot of the more optical details,
Like essentially to really understand how sunglasses work, you needed

(32:19):
like a full refresher on how light works. And that's
what this article provides. And that's what we do not
have time to provide here today. But we talked about
lumens already, and we've talked about just basically how sunglasses
modify incoming light to your eyes. Now, there are different
ways that different types of sunglasses do that, right. Modern
sunglasses especially depend on a number of different methods. There's tinting, polarization,

(32:43):
photochromic lenses, there's mirror mirroring, scratch resistant coading, anti reflective coding,
and UV coding. Tinting, though, is largely what we're talking
about here, uh, and it's certainly key to the older
methods of lens based shades. Gray tint is generally popular
because gray tint reduces the overall amount of brightness with
the least amount of color distortion. Because this is this

(33:06):
is actually a really interesting thing to to read up on,
because when you think about the color of shades, it's
easy to just think that it's just purely, you know,
a fashion choice. Am I gonna have brown? Am I
gonna maybe a mood choice? Like are you nero? And
you want to see the gladiator fights in green? Because
you like green? Yeah? Maybe I like rose rose tinted glasses.

(33:27):
There's actually and now I'm remembering that I have been
into various New Age stores where they sell um glasses
that are tinted within, and they come with like documentation
to tell you about how this particular tint will affect
your mood, oh, like in a like a magic stone
power kind of way, like it has the powers of

(33:48):
the supposed powers of these crystals embedded in the glass. Oh. Yes,
there's definitely a New Age crystal vibe to it. But
also I think maybe there's a they were incorporating a
little bit of color theory as well. How do I
get dime and sunglasses? I just want to look through
dark diamonds. I want to say that, um, the dark
Chris McDuck has those real maybe, but well, I want

(34:09):
to say that there is like a like, apart from
the cartoon that showed when it played all the clips
at the beginning, that he had like diamonds stuck in
his eyes. That's what I'm thinking of, Okay, but I think, yeah,
you wouldn't want diamonds stuck in your eyes. That'd be pointy. Um.
But anyway, the tacom here is that uh, different color,
different tinted lenses do different things. They interact with light

(34:31):
in different ways. So again, gray um is not going
to really distort color all that much. Meanwhile, yellow or
gold tins reduce the amount of blue light while allowing
a larger percentage of other frequencies through, but they can
also create a kind of glare known as blue haze.
The yellow tint virtually eliminates the blue part of the
spectrum and has the effect of making everything bright and sharp.

(34:55):
Amber and brownish tints reduce glare and they have molecules
that absorbed higher frequency colors such as blue. In addition
to UV rays, green tints on lenses filter some blue
light introduced glare, and they offer the highest contrast and
greatest visual acuity. I guess that's the thing we hadn't
mentioned much already, is that certain types of light filtering

(35:18):
could actually sharpen images and reduced blur, such as at
the gladiatorial uh combat. You know, I don't know if
that worked well. No, that makes me think. You know,
there are these stories from the past of people going
to the movie theaters with sunglasses on. Right, you'd go
sit in the movies and watch through sunglasses. I wonder
if some people were trying to see a sharper image somehow. Now,

(35:42):
the oldest method of tending to depends on constant density
and what does that mean? So this is a uniform
tinting throughout the lens. Nowadays, we'd have to wear those
shades over the uncomfortable three D glasses that were already wearing. Right,
let's say you're heading up a chain gang. That's that
Scott Luke in it. Oh, how you're talking about old
cool hand Luke and the man with no eyes that

(36:03):
that chain gang guard where he's always wearing those uh,
those perfectly mirrored shades and just seems to have no
soul exactly. Or at the other end of the spectrum,
let's say you're just trying to look super cool. I mean,
there are so many reasons people wear sunglasses that don't
have that much to do with blocking out the sunlight.
Sunglasses I think have a profound psychological and cultural impact,

(36:26):
and we should talk about that when we come back.
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we're back. So we're talking about the legacy of sunglasses

(38:38):
of what are they doing psychologically and culturally. Now, one
thing is that human behavior and self image pretty clearly
are influenced by some interplay between our ongoing senses of
seeing and being seen. Right at any given time, you're
potentially seeing something and you're potentially being seen, and how
you feel about those things is going to affect your confidence,

(39:00):
your relation to other people, maybe your generosity. As just
one strange example, just just think about all the ways
that things feel different if you're viewing them simply through
some kind of barrier or screen, Like the way that
your relationship to the world changes when you're looking at
that world through a car windshield, You know what I mean?

(39:22):
How being being inside a car looking out at the
world fundamentally changes how you think about that world, as
opposed to being in the exact same place but not
looking through the glass of a windshield. Yeah, Like, it's
an entirely different scenario if you're just, say, um, you know,
at a summer camp, just walking through the woods. But
then if you're wearing a hockey mask while doing so,

(39:42):
it changes everything well, no, it really does, I mean,
and it's not just the act of say, stalking through
the woods or the act of driving. It also seems
to be something about that barrier. And likewise, sunglasses can
be a kind of shield or barrier or blind that
has psychological effects on the person wearing them in the
person they interact with. Think again of the Chinese courtroom example.

(40:04):
You could see in a maybe in a maybe well
meaning or benevolent way, that a judge hiding their face
could be a way to try to show impartiality or neutrality,
not show emotional reactions to arguments or statements or evidence.
On the other hand, you could say that a judge
covering their face could be some kind of power move, right,

(40:25):
you know, the judge says you will not have access
to my humanity. I will look upon you, but you
will not look upon me. And even though they're not
technically the judge that you know, we do see this
with our our our law enforcement figures, right and those
chain gang figures like the man with no Eyes or
the clearly the cool ham Luke inspired character in the

(40:45):
Coen Brothers Oh brother where art thou of where you
often see like fire reflected in his dark shades, but
never his eyes. And there is actually research on the
effects of sunglasses on human behavior. Yeah, I was looking
at a two thousand ten University of Toronto study that
found that people wearing sunglasses were less generous. Now, this
was via a very small experiment in which participants were

(41:07):
given a small amount of money to divvy up between
themselves and another individual. And um and and yeah, they
found that if you were wearing the sunglasses, you were
a little sting here with the money. In a way,
it's like they could see less of of you, and
therefore there was less to be lost in uh in
in in dishing out less money. Well, it's this feeling

(41:28):
of being inside and being disconnected. I think that has
something to do with that. I mean, it's the same
way that you are much I mean, maybe not you,
but I would suspect you, like most people are just
less generous when thinking about the people around you. When
you were in a car, you ever noticed how like
if you if you were walking past somebody on the

(41:48):
sidewalk and they got in your way, you wouldn't you
wouldn't be like, what's wrong with you? You? You know,
get out of my way? But people in cars say
stuff like that all the time. I think it has
something to do with like looking out through that screen
on the world. It creates this barrier that undercuts your
generosity and connection with other people outside as humans and
turns them more into a like obstacle stimuli. Yeah. Now,

(42:13):
And another thing which you mention is that this study
does follow in the tradition of Philippa Zimbardo's famous Stanford
prison experiment, which show it's easy to forget because this
is like the less powerful detail of that study. But
I mean, I think I have read that there there
are a lot of people who look back on that
study and think, you know, we shouldn't draw too many

(42:34):
conclusions from it. I think I don't remember exactly what
the criticisms are now, but I think it it is.
It has been critically reappraised, right, it is. It is
a study that was that it certainly has a has
a long legacy onto itself. A lot of people have
revisited it that in cases have had issues with it.
But it did entail the use of mirrored sunglasses. Those
assigned to play the roles of guards in that experiment

(42:56):
were given sticks and sunglasses. What and bit Basically the
issue is that in that experiment, some people were assigned
to play the role of prisoners and some people were
assigned to play the role of guards, and they found
that even just being given these fake roles, supposedly the
people really took on their roles and, like the guards,
became brutal. Well, you know, no matter what we think

(43:17):
about the Stanford prison experiment, we do have plenty of
studies and clothed cognition in the ways that various cultural
uniforms change the way we think about ourselves. Our own
abilities are roles, and typically those experiments include things like
giving somebody a doctor's coat and a clipboard but preases
their sense of authority. Yeah, but in this but you
can look back at Stanford prison experiment and say, well,

(43:39):
a stick and some sunglasses. This is kind of to
a certain extent that the uniform of the guard. That is,
how many how many cases are sunglasses a part of
a uniform official or unofficial that have certain attributes that
we perhaps take on when we wear them, and we're
thinking about that particular archetype. For instance, it could be

(44:02):
something like just the cool cat who's wearing shades. Uh,
you know, maybe we're just thinking about David Caruso putting
those those those deal with It shades on and saying
something cool. Well, that's another good question. Why are sunglasses
so generally perceived as cool? I've read about this, and
you know, one of the ideas out there is that
sunglasses are perceived as cool because, as we've been talking about,

(44:24):
they limit people's access to your emotions and to your reactions. Right,
they make you appear more static. When other people can't
read your expressions, you appear more you know, impassive, more confident,
more cool, Yeah, more stoic. I mean, you know, the
old saying is whether the eyes that are mirror into
the soul. You know, the eyes. Our eyes are an

(44:46):
important part of how we communicate with people, and they
can there can be a certain vulnerability. Uh there, there
are various ways that we can We can just have
like dumb, staring eyes and if you're wearing shades, nobody
can see that confused look in your eyes. It's a
type of social psychological armor. Yeah, in some ways quite literally, right, Yeah,
I mean they're a way to hide. I was also

(45:08):
looking at a two thousand thirteen article published in Psychological Science,
a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, and in
this researchers from the Chinese University of Hong Kong found
that the participants who relived an embarrassing experience tended to
prefer large, dark tinted sunglasses. And they also found that
embarrassed participants expressed greater interest in sunglasses as well as

(45:31):
restorative face creams. So again they're like both exercises and
covering your face with something. Um. Now, the study was
conducted with only Chinese participants, so the authors pointed out,
you know, they're they're very likely going to be certain
cultural elements to to these test subjects that wouldn't be
president and other test subjects. Of course, that's always the case.
I mean, a lot of study studies are just done

(45:52):
on American college studies. There might be cultural issues there
as well, exactly. But but I do feel like this
in general, it does I think it matches up with
a lot of our experiences. If if you're going on
in public and you've been crying, wearing sunglasses is the
way to go. I mean, we've all had situations to
where you're just feeling maybe you're just feeling a little

(46:13):
shy or emotionally vulnerable putting on sunglasses, even if your
eyes are not puffy from tears, it's a way of
like disconnecting and feeling a little safer and being just
a little less up in the face of the world's
putting the screen up. Yeah. Now, I could be wrong
about this, but I also feel like that there's perhaps
some interesting connection between our preference for sunglasses and the

(46:35):
way that we experience so much of our lives through
screen devices. Now you know that that the sunglasses introduced
this idea of looking at the world through a kind
of barrier or screen, and we're constantly doing now social
interactions on phones, on computers, on devices where we're also
interacting with the world through a screen. I don't know

(46:57):
if there's anything interesting to tease out there, but it
feels it feels right to me. Huh, you know, I
was just thinking of another thing. Have you ever encountered
somebody internally? We're talking about people we don't know that well,
or even celebrities, but people who never see without their shades.
And then when you finally do, it's a little unnerving
because you're like, oh, is that what your eyes look like?
It's like seeing kiss without their makeup. Yeah, exactly. It

(47:19):
becomes such a part of their identity, you know. Um,
but it also your their identity becomes this slightly less
human thing. You know. There's like the stoic eyed, dark
eyed country music star, and then if you remove them,
you're like, who's that guy? Who is the one who
always wore sunglasses? Is it Roy Orbison? Does he always
have sunglasses on? Yes? I believe he did. Another one

(47:41):
is Hank Williams Jr. Sunglasses But I believe that was,
if I'm if I'm if memory serves me correctly, part
of that was due to an injury he's sustained as well.
Oh really Yeah, Well, I think another way that sunglasses
lend a sense of coolness and maybe even celebrity or
glamor to people is that they increase a sense of mystery, right,

(48:02):
that's sort of what you're getting at here. Well, yeah,
because of the other side, What do their eyes look like?
What is it like to have a personal connection with
this person? I don't even I don't even know who.
Dare stares into the eyes of both Cephis it's like Medusa. Yeah. Um,
Speaking of psychology and sunglasses, I also read two fourteen
University of Sienna study Sienna in Italy, and they made

(48:24):
a connection between panic attacks, specifically panic disorders in fear
of bright lights. And so people who experience uh panic
attacks and and and and have a panic disorder, they said,
often find comfort in the use of sunglasses. That's interesting.
I wonder what the wonder what the causal ordering there is.
Is it like they find comfort in sunglasses because they're

(48:47):
afraid of bright lights, or they're afraid of bright lights
because they find comfort in sunglasses. Yeah, that's a good
point because, yeah, there's so many now that we've discussed
all these various just psychological elements that could be in
played the cloth cognition to even just personal identity. Like
if you wear sunglasses so much that they are just
a part of who you are, then it makes sense

(49:08):
that you would feel naked without them. Maybe you end
up just wearing your sunglasses at night, much like Corey
Hart did. Are you lonely just like me? Mercy? All right?
So there you have it. Uh. That is the episode
of Invention for this week. We do hope that you
will check out Invention pod dot com. That is where

(49:29):
you'll find uh the existing episodes of the Invention Podcast.
You'll also find links out to our social media accounts,
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(49:50):
talk about episodes of Invention. Huge thanks as always to
Scott Benjamin for research assistance on this show, and to
our excellent audio producer Harry Harrison. If you would like
to get in touch with us with feedback on this
episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
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(50:31):
Oh my god. I want to come through the screen
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(50:51):
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(51:12):
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(51:36):
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