Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - Real glass eyeglasses
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Old 11-26-2023, 04:22 PM
frayedends frayedends is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bob47 View Post
The first glasses I wore were American Optical plano tempered glass safety glasses. They seemed easier to clean and stayed clean longer than today's plastic lenses. Is that just my imagination?
Not your imagination. The anti-scratch coating seems to attract grease and dirt on plastic lenses. Not to mention the glass lenses didn't scratch nearly as much. The old photo-gray glass was much nicer color than the plastic Transitions lenses.

I worked in an eyeglass lab for about 7 years. Hated making the glass lenses. They chipped and cracked pretty easily before we heat treated them and then about 1/4 of them would crack in the heat treating machine. IIRC they would go in a super heated salt solution overnight, about 1700 degrees or something crazy like that. Oh and I just remembered, we had to do a "drop ball" test on the lenses after heat treating. Drop a steel ball down a tube of a certain length onto the lens to make sure it could take the impact. Some of those broke too. We pushed plastic lenses, needless to say.