Aviatior

Aviator – In the early 20th century, when test pilots began flying higher than Mount Everest, they had to fend off temperatures as low as -80 degrees Fahrenheit. To survive the cold blast, the aviators wore leather hoods and insulated their eyes with fur goggles. To lift those glasses even for a moment would risk death. In 1920, when Shorty Schroeder dared to take a biplane above 33,000 feet, his goggles fogged up and he had no choice but to take them off. Moments later, his vision blurred and his eyes soon froze.

Schroeder managed to land the plane that day, and his friend John Macready helped him out of the cockpit. A month later, still haunted by the memory of his friend’s swollen eyelids, Macready climbed into the same plane to break Schroeder’s altitude record. Like Shredder, Macready relied on goggles designed to seal his eyes from the cold and protect his vision. But the first glasses weren’t dark enough, and “the bright sunlight in the upper atmosphere hurt his eyes,” said his daughter, Sally Macready Wallace.

Aviatior

And so Macready began working with Bausch & Lomb to design glasses specifically tailored to protect against stratospheric glare. “Dad gave Bausch & Lomb the original shape, tint and fit” of aviator lenses, Wallace said.

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By the late 1930s, advertisements for Bausch & Lomb’s Ray Ban sunglasses promised “true scientific glare protection” for fishermen and golfers. The glasses, which were not yet called aviators, still captured the essence of aviator glasses, with their teardrop shape and frames as delicate as the struts of a biplane. Sold as sports equipment, they cost a few dollars at a time when sunglasses could be bought for 25 cents. During World War II, aviators became standard equipment for soldiers, including Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

By the 1970s, frames were flourishing in color; The “female” version of the glasses came in pink, with rhinestones and sequins. There seemed to be an aviator for everyone. The frames added flourish to some of the most famous faces of the 20th century — from Elvis to Gloria Steinem to the Unabomber.

In the 1980s, Tucker Viemeister helped design aviators with sepia lenses under the Serengeti brand; such glasses came in bright turquoise shades that are still in fashion today. But Viemeister said he’s a fan of black lenses like those worn by early test pilots, which needed protection from stratospheric glare. “Sunglasses are for projecting the cold,” he said. “When you can’t see someone’s eyes, they look cooler.”

Susan Yelavich, Director of the M.A. Design Studies Program. at Parsons, she is fascinated by the history of everyday objects.

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I once wrote that the first use of dark glasses had nothing to do with the sun – judges in ancient China wore them when they presided over court. Yes, it was about hiding the eyes. The judges were not supposed to show their emotions.

What do the nuances of aviation mean to you? I associate them with the Greatest Generation. My father was a Navy pilot in W.W. II, and I dressed up as a Navy pilot for Halloween when I was 10. I was marching up and down this big hill in Cedar Grove, N.J., trying to negotiate a suburban neighborhood with dark airmen at night. I had those glasses for years. They were my father.

A version of this article appears in print on page 20 of the Sunday Magazine under the headline: Who Did It? (Aviator sunglasses). Order a reprint | Today’s paper | Subscribe Every round of classic sunglass trends tells you one thing: invest in a pair of aviators. Like trends in menswear, from coats to chinos, its origins go back to the military, developed in the early decades of the 20th century to protect pilots’ eyes from the cold temperatures of the exposed cockpit environment. Civilian use first transformed them into a technical sports pair designed to block the sun and reduce glare more effectively than what was available on the market at the time. And, as we have seen, their shape and composition evolved with the stylistic trends of the late 20th century, becoming flatter, characterized by iridescent hues, and in the 21st century incorporating colored acetate frames for variety. What are aviators?

Today, “aviator” describes a pair of wire-rimmed sunglasses with larger lenses. Most of the time they use a teardrop configuration, but the term is used for selected geometric and even heart-shaped styles. Back to basics, aviator sunglasses are distinguished by dark or reflective lenses designed to completely cover the eye area and surrounding skin, including the cheek area. Originally, this was done by a convex teardrop shape that was partially wrapped. G-15 tempered glass is attached to them, which transmits no more than 15 percent of light. Thin metal frames with a double or triple bridge or bar in front supported the lenses, included a cable or bayonet style temple and hooked behind the ears for support. Adjustable nose pads provided a more comfortable fit. This design protected an area two to three times the size of the user’s eye socket, limited peripheral sun exposure and reduced the amount of glare – an innovative advance at the time that has shaped the design and features of casual and performance eyewear ever since. Currently, the flatter shape no longer provides significant side coverage.

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While today’s aviator is often attributed to Bausch & Lomb, sunglasses that use a shield shape to protect the wearer’s eyes while cycling date back to the mid-to-late 19th century—the prototype for what we now see as the post-World War I aviator frame: In particular, American Optical designed a pair of sunglasses known as the D-1 for the US Army Air Corps. Launched in 1935, it featured round, mostly glass lenses with a one-piece shield-like design. Bausch & Lomb began developing a more comfortable frame for pilots in 1936 to replace the bulkier goggles for fog-prone flying. Lighter and simplistic in form, these “pilot glasses,” as they were originally called, used a thin gold frame and green mineral glass designed to reduce the amount of UV and infrared rays hitting the eyes worth wearing. The development involved American fighter pilot John Macready, who saw a test pilot remove his goggles after a 33,000-foot barrier. When this happened, Macready reportedly noticed that the test pilot’s eyes were frozen. It is said to have given Bausch & Lomb pilots the fit, shape and tint needed to protect their eyes from glare and temperature without fogging up or adding weight as glasses did at the time.

Bausch & Lomb’s design retained the concave teardrop shape, as it blocked the sun while still allowing pilots to look down at their control panel. This look is joined by the familiar cable-style browband and temple for added flexibility. Bausch & Lomb contracted with the US Army to continue manufacturing this frame. This design was eventually branded as “Ray Ban” – later the “Ray-Ban Aviator” – and began to be introduced into civilian use through the sports eyewear market in the later 1930s. American pilots continued to wear these sunglasses well into World War II – the period when they began to have a gradient mirror. This combination provided greater protection and better visibility from the sun, but still allowed a clear and unobstructed view of the aircraft’s instrument panel. Even more prominently in pop culture terms, the burgeoning discipline of photojournalism captured General Douglas MacArthur wearing sunglasses during the American campaign in the Philippines. In the late 20th century, Randolph Engineering was awarded a contract by the US Army in 1978 to produce the HGU-4/P Aviator frame and still holds that distinction.

The early UV-blocking and glare-blocking properties of aviation made them successful among the growing sports market in the United States, attracting fishing and hunting enthusiasts. Green lenses characterize these sunglasses, which Bausch & Lomb first made available to the public in 1937. In later years they were rebranded under the name “Ray-Ban Aviator”. Bausch & Lomb issued additional aviators for civilian use following the launch of the Ray-Ban Aviator. These include the Ray-Ban Shooter, with green or yellow Kalichrome lenses designed to enhance detail and reduce blue light. More memorably, this was the first pair to feature a “cigarette holder” – a bullet-shaped ring under the eyebrow designed to hold the wearer’s cigarette and allow the use of both hands during activity. This was followed by the Shooter Outdoorsman, a similar frame for hunting and shooting enthusiasts, and the Caravan, a square frame style introduced in the late 1950s. Pop culture helped grow the popularity of aviation from this point on. The frame – which took on a flatter, less curved shape over the next few decades – was seen early on from Marlon Brando in The Wild One to Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver and well into the 1980s in Top Gun. Between these cinematic landmarks, they began