History of Opera Glasses

Focusing in

In 1823, optical instruments, which gave patrons in cheaper seats the same viewing advantage as those in the front row, became popular among France's opera-goers. Telescopic lenses and stereoscopic prisms were combined to provide magnified 3-D viewing, popular at the opera, theatre, and in masquerade.

Opera glasses were useful and often pretentious. Users spent as much time scoping out the audience as they did focusing on the stage performance. Opera glasses, valued at almost $4.25 million, were used by Abraham Lincoln when he was assassinated at Ford's theatre in 1865.

Eyeglass evolution

Galileo invented the first telescope in 1609, able to magnify up to 30 times and see 20% of the moon's surface without repositioning. The first opera glasses, manufactured in the 1730s, were nothing more than monocular glasses. The first opera binoculars used an arrangement similar to Galileo's, with convex objective lenses and concave eyepieces located at opposite ends of the viewing tube.

Between 1815 and 1823, Johann Friedrich Voigtlander, an optician in Vienna, and English optician J.T. Hudson, each received recognition for developing monocular spyglasses into opera glasses. Abridging frames fixed together the barrels of two spyglasses, each with individual adjustments. Later, a patented screw allowed the barrels to extend when twisted; a third bridge and focusing wheel between the barrels made it possible to adjust the two eyetubes simultaneously.