Benjamin Franklin admitted he could not “distinguish a letter even of large print” without his glasses. Franklin had hyperopia — he could see distant objects better than close ones, and was often pictured and caricatured in them. In several of them, he seems to be bearing a strange pair, with lenses seemingly made in two different pieces joined together horizontally in the middle. Could those have been the first bifocals? Certainly a lot of a writing seems to confirm they were invented by Franklin  — letters to colleagues, to opticians working on his order and others.

On this day, May 23, in 1785 Benjamin wrote a letter to a noted London optician Peter M. Dollond that strongly suggests Franklin came up with the idea for bifocals.

Franklin wrote he had “formerly two pairs of spectacles, which I shifted occasionally, as in traveling I sometimes read, and often wanted to regards the prospects. Finding the change troublesome, and not always sufficiently ready, I had the glasses cut and half of each kind associated in the same circle, thus”  and including a drawing of what the glasses would look like