Cultural Impact Of Lens Technology Essay

For all the technical changes brought about by lens technology, no technological innovation can be fully understood without examining its social implications; as such, it is critical that we also consider the cultural impacts of the lens in America. Firstly, it is worth considering the social side of the rise of institutionalized science in the late 19th century. Industrialization in the final quarter of the 1800s was accompanied by an increasing investment in both private and government-funded federal pursuits, which was inspired by an increasingly-pervasive belief that science could yield direct benefits to the public. This sentiment tied into the broader mantra of Gilded Age progressivism and inevitable progress, but it did not arise in a vacuum: rather, publicly-visible improvements derived from science were necessary as a catalyst for this explosion in popular support and increased funding for scientific pursuits. One important source of this increased scientific enthusiasm was corrective lenses. As

From the advent of the American axe in the late 1700s through the factory systems and many ancillary technologies that defined the industrialization and urbanization of the following century, we see examples of uniquely modified technologies shaping American culture, economics, and sense of identity. The technologies derived from the lens are a prime example of this phenomenon at work in the late 19th century. Through the benefits of vision correction in education, scientific breakthroughs enabled by lens-based imaging, and the cultural significance of glasses in promoting an industrial consumerist culture, lenses helped to fuel perceptions of technological optimism and inevitability. In doing so, they contributed to the broader narrative of progressive-era thinking, in which scientific and technological advances would fix societal ills over