"Some decorative bling." Man, it's so weird to see some of the more ridiculous slang from my teen years wind up being spoken in such a dignified context.
After watching a few videos recently on the difficulty of making glass from scratch (How to Make everything / Cody's Lab, Carsandwater) I see the old glasses and wonder about the history and development of optical quality glass. Would love to see some of this on Objectivity and/or Periodic Videos!
It made me wonder how accurately you could determine the state of someone's eyesight based on rather old glasses. Obviously they didn't grind lenses to specific prescriptions as we do today, but I wonder how closely you could get a pair to match your eyesight, then and through history, and at what expense.
Siddharth Bala, That would be tortoiseshell, which is exactly what is sounds like. It was a common material for glasses frames, combs, inlays, etc. The style is still replicated in plastic for frames especially, and "tortoiseshell" now refers to the pattern as much as the actual material.
And that leads into The Worshipful Company of Horners, a London trade guild dating from 1284 who took on plastics in 1943. London trade guilds make another field that Brady might look at, though I suppose his plate is full.
+Michael Steeves I think there was a video that happened to mention the island of glassmakers in Venice. +Serval Spots By the end of the 18th Century, telescope making was getting into the "I'll do you one better" phase and the top instruments were refractors with the achromatic lens having been invented in the 1750s and the apochromat the following decade by the achromat -inventor- patent-holder's son. Achromatic lenses use two different types of glasses with different properties sandwiched together to eliminate chromatic and spherical aberration. Daniel Fahrenheit's instruments of 1720 were excellent for any age and just waiting for the right working fluids to be discovered. The art and science of glassmaking and blowing was well on by the end of Priestley's life.
A video with the Royal Society building historian would be interesting. I'd be interested to hear about the various residences that the Society has occupied over it long existence. In addition, I'd like to know what the society did to protect all of its priceless documents and artifacts during the Blitz (1940-1941). Did everything get shipped to an unassuming cottage on the outside of London?
Newton published his Laws of Motion only a few years later in 1687. So interesting to see that many great minds converge towards an idea when its time arrives
Either horn or more likely looking at it turtle shell, it can become malleable with heat and had some of the properties of a modern plastic and was often used like we use plastic in the 18th and 19th centuries though only for high quality products it was an expensive material.
Scheele wrote to Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier about his discovery but the letter never reached it's destination. In the meantime Priestley independently discovered oxygen by heading mercury oxide with a lens that had once belonged to Cosimo Medici (!) He then personally went to see Lavoisier in France. It wasn't the only time Scheele missed out and I think it was Isaac Asimov who called Scheele "Hard Luck Scheele". Lotsa name dropping there. It is just another example of independent inventions and discoveries which turn up more or less simultaneously because the background technology and knowledge exists.
Carl Wilhelm Scheele of Sweden discovered oxygen in 1773, one year before Priestley. Priestley is unfairly usually the one credited since he published his findings quicker.
