The birth of prescription glasses can be traced back to the 6^th century BC.

The earliest reference to magnification dates back to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs which display "simple glass meniscal lenses". The earliest written record of magnification dates back to the 1st century AD, when Seneca the Younger wrote that letters, however small and indistinct, were seen enlarged and more clearly through a globe or glass filled with water. Emperor Nero is also said to have watched the gladiatorial games using an emerald as a corrective lens.

Abbas Ibn Firnas was said to have used corrective prescription glasses in the 9th century, who had found a way to produce very clear glass. The earliest evidence of "a magnifying device, a convex lens forming a magnified image," dates back to the Book of Optics published by Alhazen in 1021. When it was translated into Latin, it improved instrumental to the invention of prescription glasses in 13th century Italy.

Salvino D'Armate is credited with inventing the wearable version of prescription glasses, around 1284 in Italy. The earliest pictorial evidence for the use of prescription glasses, however, is Tomaso da Modena's 1352 portrait of the cardinal Hugh de Provence reading in a scriptorium.

These early prescription glasses had convex lenses that could correct both hyperopia (farsightedness), and the presbyopia that commonly develops as a symptom of aging. The American scientist Benjamin Franklin, who suffered from both myopia and presbyopia, invented prescription glasses with bifocal lenses in 1784 to avoid having to regularly switch between two pair of glasses. The first set of prescription glasses for correcting astigmatism were constructed by the British astronomer George Airy in 1825.

Later, with the growing use of prescription glasses, The General Optical Council was created by Parliament in 1958 through the Opticians Act.

In 2005 prescription glasses were sold online for the first time thus giving people the chance to buy their glasses directly from the manufacturer, usually paying far less. With a short time, online stores for prescription glasses became one of the most notable e-commerce business concepts.

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