So Ayscough came up with an idea to make blue and green tinted lenses to help filter out some of the light. The mash-up of this, along with the Chinese corrective smoke lenses, eventually became sun-blocking specs. Anyways, a few wars happen and we jump ahead to the 1900s in the grand ol’ USA.

Edison is credited for the invention of Kinetoscope, which took images and made them move, which eventually leads us to the golden age of black and white Hollywood film. The silent film era generated some amazing pieces of artistic history, despite the limited amount of technology.

Basically, we were jamming 16 pieces of film per second through a pinhole of light. The film needed a lot of light to get the images to expose properly, so producers would supplement this with high intensity Arc Lamps (which basically ignite ionized gas molecules inside of a tube which can reach up to 500 degree Celsius) and magnesium camera flashes -- just imagine the creepy guy standing inside of a cloth box sparking a huge rail of chemicals on a piece of wood.



The incredible brightness of the light caused retinal damage to many actors, and no one wants to be seen with puffy red eyes. So, just as the peanut butter truck crashed into the chocolate truck to make Reese Cups, sunglasses crashed into the faces of the budding stars of this new and magical form of scientific and glamour drenched art. These sunglasses were metal framed, not very accessible -- unless you were someone like Charlie Chaplin -- uncomfortable, and just beginning to gain traction in the world of fashion because of the association with famous figures.