subject: A Brief History Of The Contact Lens [print this page] The first ever contact lens was made by a German physiologist called Adolf Fick in 1887. The lens he created was made from glass and was named the Scleral lens because it covered the sclera area of the eye, which is commonly known as the white part. By 1912 an optician called Carl Zeiss had further developed this contact lens concept and had created a glass corneal lens that fitted over the cornea on the eye.
In 1938 two scientists known as Obrig and Muller introduced the plastic contact lens which was created out of a plastic known as Plexiglas. This had many benefits over the previous glass lenses because the plastic was lighter and far easier to wear. The first ever plastic corneal contact lens was made by Kevin Touhy in 1948.
To fit these early contacts, patients would have an impression made of their eyeball. The lens would then be formed from these impressions, but the procedure was very uncomfortable for the patient and the resulting lens caused problems when worn. Scleral lenses would not allow oxygen to the eye if the lens had not fallen out already and the removal was a nightmare.
Touhy's first corneal lens had a diameter of 10.5 millimetres and in 1954 he reduced the diameter even further to 9.5 millimetres so they were easier to wear. Around the same time as this the company Bausch and Lomb had developed the keratometer, a diagnostic instrument that would measure the cornea and removed the need for the old fashioned eye ball impressions.
The first successful soft contact lens was developed in Czechoslovakia; in 1952 the professors in the Department of Plastics at the Technical University in Prague began to look at designing a new material that would be compatible with living tissue. Their intention was not to create the contact lens but the team ended up inventing what is now known as 'hydrophilic gel'. This gel had an affinity to water and is suitable for eye implants.
It did not take long for these scientists to discover the potential of this material as a corrective lens and they quickly began experimenting. The experiments and testing were mocked by their colleagues but one of these scientists, Otto Wichterle had begun creating the soft lens in his own kitchen. He and his wife created an impressive 5,500 lenses from home that were tested in 1961 and the success of these soon spread within the scientific community. By 1971 the soft lens had been launched and in the first year alone 100,000 pairs were sold from Bausch and Lomb.
