When customers phone us to discuss our eyewear, they sometimes get confused between the two 'P's

With that in mind, I thought I'd write a short piece explaining exactly what the difference - and relationship - is between the two terms. Let's begin with Polaroid sunglasses, and we should point out straight away that it is a brand name belonging to the Polaroid Corporation, founded in 1937 by Edwin Land. This company didn't set out to make sunglasses specifically - what they actually did was to create a material, called J-sheet, later changed to H-Sheet, which facilitates polarisation in a highly effective fashion; okay, so there is the link - polaroid does in fact equal polarised.

For those of you scratching your heads about polarisation, basically, you need to know that glare (that horrible effect of bright sunlight bouncing off car windows, clouds etc.) is caused by the sun's rays hitting a horizontal surface. By filtering out these horizontal rays, we can greatly reduce, or even remove, glare - got it?

There are actually two ways of making a polarising sunglasses lens. The first is to integrate the technology into the lens manufacture; this is an expensive process, and fortunately, there is an alternative, this being to add a polarising filter to the front of a standard lens. This second method is a remarkably effective way of doing it, and you'd never know it was there (until someone like me tells you, that is!). This second method is a lot cheaper than the integration, and it allows us to bring you high-spec, high-tech polarised eyewear at a modest cost.

Several pairs of sunglasses in the Rapid Eyewear range benefit from polarised lenses, including all of our golf range, which include a Category 2 version for medium light conditions, the brand new Ace and Flitemaster, plus Nimbus in our Model Glasses range, all of our fishing sunglasses and Pro Performance. These polarised sunglasses have consistently been our top sellers, and their performance continues to impress sports men and women at all levels.