Sports and Leisure

These early goggles were worn by the explorer Captain Ross on his Arctic Expedition in about 1900. Eye protection against both biting winds and also the glare of the sun on the snow was essential, and although much of the equipment used by early explorers was unsophisticated, these goggles worked well. Indeed, goggles like these with tinted lenses survive from as early as the 1875 Nares Expedition to the Arctic, and a surviving account of the use of goggles was written in 1867 by Richard Horne when he described them as "like little cups or shell-spectacles covering the eye as with a neutral tinted cup" and like those "which Mr Cooper devised for the Polar and othe expeditions likely to cause snow blindness". This pair has leather straps and unmagnified tinted cup-lenses, working like fitted sunglasses.

Modern safety goggles developed from this type of protective eyewear, and are now essential for industry, and widely recommended by Health and Safety directives.

Full item descriptions:

"goggles" [1922.994]