The earliest identifiable instance of a manufactured lens is a polished crystal discovered at a Early Riewaye Confederation site at the Kelna Archeological Site. Polished crystal lenses were a relatively common feature of the Early Riewaye Confederation as the proliferation of writing began in the region, but as the region developed and the Late Riewaye Confederation was formed and the art of glassmaking began to be developed in the four centuries preceding the Red Death, the Late Riewaye Confederation lenses were made of glass. Sealed glass vessels filled with water existed to magnify small text written on parchment, likely for the bureaucracy of the Confederation.

These glass vessels suddenly stop popping up in the archaeological record roughly at the same time as the Red Death, the Miecalism outbreak that ended the Early Bronze Age, and the subsequent depopulation of the Central Droga River Valley caused the sudden and total collapse of the Late Riewaye Confederation. The glassmaking industry completely shifted north to the foothills of the Antis Mountains in the migration and formation of the Upper Riewaye Culture, as do much of the technological capabilities of the Riewaye people. Lensmaking stopped as a craft until much later on, but the records of their existence did persist.

They persisted so that when Rynatoo finally united the Riewaye peoples along the Droga River under a single polity for the first time since the Late Riewaye Confederation, the rapidly expanding glassmaking industry was able to attempt to rediscover the glasses that magnified text and allowed smaller objects to be seen from afar. Until the state bureaucracy decided it had an interest in rediscovering the old technologies of the Riewaye Confederation, though, this development was rather slow.

When the state did look into it, the development quickly grew rapid, as a few skilled and dedicated craftsmen being paid to experiment tend to find things rather quickly (as later empires would discover once science became a state-funded endeavor). Within Impirren Waykapaq’s reign glass optical lenses were developed. The art was rather quickly refined to a point where the industry was monopolized by the state, anything that was this useful had to be controlled totally by a state company rather than private individuals, of course. Within the decade every bureaucrat was aware of the existence of lenses and could request the use of one of they decided that it would aid their going over records or writings or organizing such, etcetera.

Soon, the interest of merchants in being able to purchase lenses for use in navigation quickly became apparent. Having more than one lens placed and kept together by some dark cylinder (initially someone’s hands) allowed for the world to be magnified further. Something that navigators quite liked.

The light coming in from above and below the seeing tools implied several things about the nature of light, things that got the intellectuals thinking rather hard.