Like many inventions, making contact lenses took time and effort. Many personalities were involved in this and they came up with different ideas over many years that helped create this amazing invention.
While glasses were created over 700 years ago, contact lenses covering only the cornea have existed for just over 60 years.
So read along to gain a little knowledge on how contact lenses came into existence.
History of Contact lenses
In 1508, the famous Leonardo DaVinci realized that submerging one’s head into a bucket of water could help fix certain vision issues. He wrote “The Codex Of The Eye’, created a glass lens with a funnel to pour water. This proved to be impractical and it was clear that the invention was far ahead of its time.
Then 150 years later, a mathematician named Descarte suggested placing the contacts directly on the cornea was a better idea. But failed because his design didn’t allow blinking and external tubes for support were needed.
Later on Thomas Young used Descartes idea and created a prototype in 1801. He tried it on himself using wax and observed that it blurred his vision but that could be corrected with another pair of lenses.
In 1823 Sir John Herschel proposed to shred the lens for it to fit the cornea as much as possible.
In 1887 F. Muller, German artificial glass eye makers, created contacts to protect the diseased eye and were only used for specific medical purposes. They still had a long way to go because the large contacts needed constant artificial lubrication and the smaller contacts had troubles getting attached to the eye and were dangerous as they were fragile and could break. Besides, they still couldn’t correct visions.
In 1936 William Feinbloom used plastic in lenses, this was safer than the glass ones as it wouldn’t break in the eye. People started to prefer them for obvious reasons and the glass contact lenses were discarded. But the plastic ones could be worn for short periods of time as they were uncomfortable because they covered the whole front eye.
Then 12 years later Kevin Touhy created a corneal lens…by accident. While he was sanding down a plastic lens, the scleral part fell off and the remaining material perfectly covered just the cornea. It was still attached, allowing proper movements and blinking.
Finally in 1960 soft hydrogel lenses were made by chemists, Wichterle and Lim. They still had complications like they were hard to handle because of high water contents and the optical quality was horrible.
Around the 1970s, after a lot of developments, Bionite soft lenses were made available in the United Kingdom and they were far more comfortable. Then a year later they also became available in the US and Canada.
In 1987, disposable contact lenses were out which were safer. Companies like Johnson & Johnson produced lenses like Acuvue 1 Day Moist which are worn in the day and thrown out later. Contact lenses have come a far way, allowing people to see clearly with comfort.