All About Progressive Lenses
When you really think about it, there isn't a technology in the world that has stopped changing
, evolving and improving. While we may still use a combustion engine that should for all intents and purposes be obsolete if it wasn't for the powers that be, even that contraption is significantly more efficient than it used to be. The world of eyeglasses is no exception. The common bifocal has been in use for centuries, although for some reason, many people think that this technology stopped evolving around the time of Ben Franklin. The truth is that first, with no line bifocals and now with Progressive lenses, the bifocal has been brought into the 21st century and they are significantly more appealing, easier to use and easier to get used to than their ancient cousins. Let's take a look at how we got here, how Progressive lenses work and why they are so much more popular than old fashioned bifocals.
Long before there were progressive lenses, there were bifocals and trifocals. These inventive types of lenses fused together two, or three, different prescriptions so that a person didn't need to wear separate glasses for reading and for seeing things that were far away; and they were very popular. They saved people money and they saved time, as well. However, they weren't without their critics. Original bifocals and trifocals had distinct lines that you could see when you held the eyeglasses up in the air that marked where one prescription started and the other ended. In addition, some people simply couldn't wear them because they never adjusted to the rather odd feeling of looking straight ahead and seeing one thing and then looking down and seeing another.
Progress was made with no line bifocals. These eyeglasses managed to remove that line, but the discomfort for many remained. Now, with Progressive lenses, that issue has been taken care of for good, and sales are through the roof. With progressive lenses, the transition between one prescription to the other is very gradual, and most of them even have a "middle zone" that acts almost like a pair of trifocals so that there is actually three different zones in your lens: prescription 1, a transition area that slowly allows your eye to adjust from one zone to another and then your second prescription. It may sound a little complicated, but just about everyone would agree that this technology is a significant improvement over the way things were done not so long ago.
There were several major issues that Progressive lenses needed to answer for them to be commercially viable. The first was price. When Progressive lenses first hit the market, they could only be bought by those willing to spend hundreds of dollars. Surprisingly, even at this high price, these lenses were a big hit since they offered such a technological advancement compared to bifocals and trifocals. As raw materials become less expensive, the price of Progressive lenses has come down a lot and now is only slightly more expensive than what you would pay for a pair of no line bifocals.
The other major issue that Progressive lenses needed to be able to cover is that of comfort. As mentioned above, the big knock against bifocals was always the fact that a good number of people returned them because they just couldn't get used to the fact that vision suddenly changed any time they looked down. While this problem hasn't been completely eliminated, there is no denying the fact that this phenomenon happens significantly less with Progressive lenses than it does with bifocals. It is believed that since Progressive lenses offer a gradual transition from one prescription to the other, people are able to adjust much easier from one to the other, even in rapid succession. This is just one of the major reasons why progressive lenses manage to beat out all others when it comes to fitting more than one prescription into a single set of lenses.
The other major attraction that progressive lenses provide is overall cost savings. There are so many people now that would consider getting a pair of progressive lenses that would never have gotten bifocals, these same people are now saved from having to buy one pair of glasses for reading and one for looking long distances. This may not sound like a big deal, but if you are the kind of person who only wears designer brands, you could save hundreds of dollars by only buying one pair of glasses with progressive lenses in them.
As you can see, the progressive lens has completely changed the way that people shop for eyeglasses. The traditional bifocal has been rendered useless now that this new version is available around the world. The next time you are set to get glasses, consider bringing home a pair of progressive lenses instead.
by: Sara Roberts
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