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,
L'Officiel des Spectacles L'Officiel des Spectacles L'Officiel des spectacles is a weekly cultural guide to Paris founded by Jean-Philippe Richemond in 1946. Its purpose is to list every cultural event in Paris and Île-de-France. The first edition appeared on September 25, 1946, under the title "Cette semaine" ("This Week"). Its purpose was to inform its readers, in the most precise and consise way possible, of every event taking place that week that was "not of a political, religious, or controversial nature." Rather, its intention was to provide information "about everything that is leisure, everything that is Paris". The first publication contained 32 pages