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,
Quartier des spectacles structure, which will allow the NFB to interface more closely with the public and expand its digital media research and production facilities. Pre-existing cultural facilities in the area demarcated by the Quartier des spectacles include: The area lost a key arts venue with the demolition of the Montreal Spectrum. Sixty-seven mature crabapple trees were cut down in a small square, Place Albert-Duquesne. Montreal's former red light district on Saint-Laurent Boulevard is being demolished, with the facades of six buildings dismantled for possible future reuse, in a move condemned by advocacy group Heritage Montreal. In 2008, Mayor Gérald Tremblay stated that