Brill's optical museum

What do Napoleon Bonaparte, Benjamin Franklin and Eliezer Ben-Yehuda have in common? Their glasses are part of a unique optical accessories collection held by the Israeli optician David Brill.

In Brill's collection, exhibited at his optic store in Givatayim, one can find a selection of rare eyeglass frames from the 15th century to the 20th century; a selection of old cameras including a Box system camera – among the first cameras ever produced; theatre binoculars of the Renaissance; an old Nelson telescope; and an old microscope from the beginning of the scientific microscopes era.

photos: Hans Engelsman

These rare items, picked by David Brill for decades in Israel and abroad, also include spectacles which were used by the father of modern Hebrew, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, spectacles and telescopes which were used by Napoleon Bonaparte in the 18th century, and bifocal lenses which were produced by Benjamin Franklin.