Eyeglasses have been around, pretty much, for as long as human beings have been able to shape glass. But the engineering problems get a little trickier when the lens has to be placed directly on the surface of the eye.
So, while the idea of a contact lens might stretch all the way back to Leonardo Da Vinci (and beyond), the development of the technology has been the result of many contributors, and a steady improvement over successive generations of lens.
An 18th-century polymath, Thomas Young, is thought to have attached tubes to his eyes using wax. The 20th-century optometrist, William Feinbloom, struck upon the idea of combining glass with plastic to make the lens more malleable and comfortable. Later, water-absorbing ‘hydrogel’ materials became the standard, with silicon hydrogel now dominating the industry.
Continue reading “The Science Behind Contact Lenses: How They Work”
