Ray-Ban Lenses: A Story of Mineral Glass

When choosing glasses, people often focus on color, shape, mirror coating, and the model's popularity. Surprisingly, the lens material is far from the first criterion.

To change this trend, let's draw attention to the material that was originally used to make optical lenses — mineral glass.

A Greeting from the Past

Glass is an inorganic substance that first appeared in ancient Egypt and the Near East.

As for one of its types, mineral glass — it is melted quartz sand (found in nature!) with various additives. Interestingly, it is also called "ordinary" because, due to its naturalness and low cost, it is used in various spheres of human life.



Today, besides optics, mineral glass is used in watchmaking. 90% of the world's produced watch dials are covered with a thin film made from it.

As Clear as Glass

Back in 1937. This is the year Ray-Ban's iconic Aviator sunglasses were born. What was the material of the lenses for the brand's first product, which was just on the verge of success? Yes, it was mineral glass.



There are objective reasons for using glass in optics:

• Durability (no to scratches);
• Image perception without distortion;
• Lightweight (sunglasses are afocal, meaning they have no optical power, and you don't need to wear them constantly);
• Good adhesion (bonding) of the glass with coatings used in optics;
• UV radiation filtration;
• No deformations.

When discussing the drawbacks of mineral glass, they do exist: it's heavier than polymers, lacks versatility (you can't fit glass in every frame), can only be factory-tinted (you can't tint it during assembly), and has low impact resistance.

As for the latter drawback, it's worth noting that theoretically, it's true, but in modern practice, it is not.



The thing is, when the US introduced impact resistance standards in optical manufacturing, glass lenses started losing to plastic. To avoid this, the lenses were thickened through thermal tempering, which wasn't ideal for this purpose: temperature fluctuations caused scratches, reducing impact resistance, and the lens became heavier due to thickening.

Nowadays, however, there is another method — chemical strengthening. This allows the lens to remain thin, not too heavy, and, at the same time, impact-resistant.



And if you're convinced that mineral glass lenses are at least a cool tribute to tradition, we invite you to visit our website, where Ray-Ban offers a variety of models in different colors and shapes made from this HISTORICAL material.