From the Ghost of Optics Past

"If the ghost of a Florentine monk who died in 1317 had appeared in Chicago last week, it could have pointed a spectral finger at 59 men and one woman, members of the American Academy of Optometrists, and intoned: 'Your means of livelihood you owe mostly to me.' In a Vienna museum stands a statue of this medieval monk, with a pair of glasses in one hand and bearing this inscription: Here lies Salvina D'Armato degli Armati of Florence, the inventor of spectacles. May God forgive his sins," according to a post from a 1936 issue of Time.