Gros 1 Ethan Gros WRA 110 7 February 2014 Seeing Through the Lenses When I was in sixth grade

I began to realize that I could not see the board at the front of the classroom, and I considered that I might need glasses but was afraid of being bullied. Then one of my best friends got new glasses, and when I tried his glasses on they helped me to see the board at the front of the room. Eventually I began to realize that any amount of bullying that I may receive would not matter as much as being able to see, so I decided to get glasses. The glasses changed the way I viewed the world around me because it allowed for me to see everything like I never could. Glasses to me are a technological development that enables people the ability to see things that they might never have been able to without them. Glass to some people is just a piece modeled to help improve a persons vision, although people do not see the technological design and development in creating a pair of glasses for solving a persons specific vision problem. Technology to me is defined as an organized system, applying knowledge to develop and design a tool. Technology is created by physical objects to resolve a specific problem, but the problem solved does not have to be the main reason for the technological development. Even the most arbitrary items, like glasses, can be considered technology and the culture that surrounds these arbitrary items can change the way people use and perceive the item.

An arbitrary artifact that can be viewed as technology is glasses. Glasses originated in the thirteenth century when scientists were experimenting with refracting light through a glass lens. Eventually the scientists began to realize that certain lens could help make images closer or

Gros 2 further away. This developed into the technological discovery of glasses; the scientist began to put lenses into a frame that would allow people to seeing things further away or closer.

Figure 4. Representative glass-producing facility In the article Figure 4 shows a typical cross section of a glass manufacturing facility. When creating glass there are several steps the glass must go through, like charging, mixing, melting, refining and annealing, these steps in glass-manufacturing are similar, but the forming operations are the most diverse. (Dietz, Earl, and Hench). The way that glasses work are the lenses in the glasses help to focus light entering the eye onto the retina, which results in the image that someone is looking at to become clearer. Glasses are a technology because they are made of physical object that help to improve human sight. Glasses were designed and developed to improve peoples ability to see things from a close and/or far distance, and the design have continually changed and grown to improve the quality of peoples sight, as well as becoming more comfortable to wear or use. Ophthalmologists are medical doctors that specialize in the diagnosing and treatment of diseases in the eye. These doctors have continued to become more skilled in diagnosing peoples vision, so that the person is prescribed the glasses more suitable to fitting their needs.

Glasses only are helpful to a select amount of people. Peoples corneas (which acts like a convex lens in your eye) can be slightly too curved, so it is slightly too strong of a lens and

Gros 3 focuses the light in a shorter distance than it should. In other cases the cornea is ok, but the eyeball is oval shaped and the image focuses before it gets to the retina. These are some of the cases where people use glasses; they are not meant for most people, but rather are used by those who need corrective glasses. The culture that influenced me as I was growing up often put glasses into a negative perspective. Glasses were believed to only be worn by older people with poor eye sight, or weak people, or nerdy people that play video games or read books all day. These types of preconceived notions behind glasses are the reason that kids in my generation did not find glasses appealing. However as I have gotten older I see commercials making glasses more appealing to the younger generation and kids today are becoming more respectful of people that wear glasses. The younger generation has changed the preconceived notions from nerdy to smart, intellectual, and intelligent. Google has promoted the use of glasses by creating google glasses that are a pair of smart glasses. They have furthered the technological development and added electronics to the frame of the glasses. This is just an example of how glasses have been put into a positive perspective for the more modern generation. Also glasses have become a fashion statement that has helped people accept glasses in society more. Glasses come in all different assortments of frames because now lenses help to depict someones character visually. This amazing invention has been valued by people with the desire for corrective lenses, but also glasses have become even more appreciated by society needing to stay connected through electronics, with the introduction of the google glasses and those who want to make a fashion statement with the different assortment of frames for glasses.

Glasses first started with scientists experimenting with the refracting of light through glass. Then the technological development of glasses was discovered through putting glasses into frames. This discovery allowed for people with poor eye sight to be improved their eye sight by

Gros 4 looking through glass lenses. People that valued glasses the most are people that have poor eye sight because glasses helps to improve those people with poor eye sight . In the culture that I grew up in glasses were less respected or appreciated; however, as time went on glasses have become more popular throughout society and glasses are more widely accepted by everyone. Glasses have become so popular that new advancements in design of glasses have been made. This depicts glasses as an organized system made of materials, built to solve peoples issues with sight, thus making it a technological development and is such a good invention that people continue to refine it and add more features to the ever growing technology known as glasses.

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Work Cited Dietz, Earl D., and L. L. Hench. "Glass." Van Nostrand's Encyclopedia of Chemistry. Ed. Glenn D. Considine. 5th ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Interscience, 2005. 723-730. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.