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,
Elizabeth Capell, Countess of Essex (1704-1784) Elizabeth Capell, Countess of Essex (1704-1784) Elizabeth Capell, Countess of Essex (1704 – 8 June 1784) was the second wife of William Capell, 3rd Earl of Essex, and the mother of William Anne Capell, 4th Earl of Essex. Lady Elizabeth was the daughter of Wriothesley Russell, 2nd Duke of Bedford. The earl, whose first wife Jane had died in 1724, married Elizabeth on 3 February 1726. They had two sons and two daughters. The only one to survive infancy was William Anne (1732-1799), who would become the 4th Earl. She died in June 1784, aged about eighty. A portrait of