Optician more important and dignified. Far-sighted or aging colonial Americans imported spectacles from Europe. Spectacles were primarily for the affluent and literate colonists, who required a valuable and precious appliance. Benjamin Franklin in the 1780s developed the bifocal. Bifocal lenses advanced little in the first half of the 19th century. The terms bifocal and trifocal were introduced in London by John Isaac Hawkins, whose trifocals were patented in 1827. In 1884 B. M. Hanna was granted patents on two forms of bifocals which become commercially standardized as the "cemented" and "perfection" bifocals. Both had the serious faults of ugly appearance, fragility,
Thomas Marshall (Virginia politician, born 1784) Thomas Marshall (Virginia politician, born 1784) Thomas Marshall (July 21, 1784 – June 29, 1835) was a Virginia lawyer, planter and politician. He lived at Oak Hill plantation and represented Fauquier County in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1830 until his death in 1835. The firstborn of Chief Justice John Marshall and his wife, the former Mary Willis Ambler (both families being among the First Families of Virginia), Thomas Marshall was named for his paternal grandfather, the revolutionary Thomas Marshall who moved to Fauquier County and built Oak Hill, then gave it to his son John Marshall as he