Plaster of Paris

Sixties Parisian street scene, 1963.

Staring At The Sun

Polarized lenses are popular with those who play outdoor sports, those who drive a lot, and people who spend time near the water. The reason people choose polarized sunglasses to cut down on glare from horizontal surfaces like water, playing fields, and the hoods and roofs of vehicles. Polarized lenses also reduce eye strain and make hazards easier to see. Additionally Polarized lenses don’t dim the field of vision, so whether lenses are polarized or not is unrelated to how dark the lenses are. 

Courtesy of Wenn Pic

Courtesy of 20th Century Fox

Courtesy of Wenn Pic

Courtesy of Jen Lowery

Polarized lenses can be found in a multitude of colored tints, as mirrored lenses and are available as traditional tempered glass.

Early Carl Zeiss sunglass lenses used brown tints to reduce the impact of solar radiation for light sensitive individuals.

Hi-Fi News

The Limits of Language

The Captive Mind bookcover, graphic design by Paul Rand (1955)

Vintage poster for the play Kaspar by Peter Handke (1966)

Ad Week | Persol of 1900

An amazing advertisement from Persol at the turn of the 20th century. The name PERSOL derived from "per il sole," which, in Italian, means "for the sun." Here we see a play the word "parasol" which has phonetic similarities to Persol, both offering protection from the sun.

Persol began in 1917 in the Italian city of Turin by Giuseppe Ratti, owner of Berry Opticians. Ratti designed in such a way as to meet the comfort and safety requirements of aviators and pilots, as well as ideal vision standards. Persol was not introduced to the United States until 1962.

Turin is also the birthplace of the Shroud of Turin, a controversial ancient linen cloth bearing the likeness of Jesus. The Shroud achieved its notoreity in 1898, pre-dating the creation of Persol by only twenty years.

Ad Week | Early 80s Commodore Style

I designed Tax Pack so you could do something really practical with your VIC 20.
-Peter Lambert, MBA, Vice President, Product Development, Cosmopolitan Software

This vintage magazine ad comes from Compute! Gazette of January 1983 and features a forward thinking young man pulling off a well groomed comb-over. The VIC-20 refers to the Commodore VIC-20, an 8-bit home computer and the first computer to sell one million units.

The VIC-20 was originally meant to be called Vixen, but this name was inappropriate in Germany, because it sounds like wichsen, a colloquial word for "masturbate". VIC, which was subsequently chosen, has a similar problem, it can be pronounced like fick[en], the German word for "f*ck". Therefore the VIC-20 was finally marketed as the VC-20 "Volkscomputer". Sales of the VIC-20 started declining after the launch of the Commodore 64 in that same year.

HDV research suggests that this may be Peter Lambert today.

Ad Week | Vintage French Wall Mural

Here is a faded wall mural for eyewear found in Bagnolet, France. Bagnolet is a commune in the eastern suburbs of Paris. Its inhabitants are called Bagnoletais. Learn about them here.

Ad Week | Seventies Era Agfachrome Girls

Agfachrome CT18 Film Ad from Time Magazine, July of 1973 featuring Hexagon Opthalmic Frames

Honeywell Agfachrome ad circa 1975 featuring a well-rounded woman in an orange full shield sunglass.

Ad Week | When Your Child Needs GLASSES

This informative pamphlet answers such questions (usually asked by parents) as:
"Are glasses really necessary?"
"Why is it so many children are now wearing glasses, when in former years this was not so?"
"Are eyes becoming worse?"
"What can be done to prevent this situation?"

Renauld of France Sunglasses Vintage Ad