When it comes to vision, history has been full of visionaries. Many people think that contact lenses are an invention of the 20th century. In fact, people have been trying to find a way to get rid of their glasses for centuries. Leonardo da Vinci had the idea in the 16th century. As he did with many of his ideas, he made sketches of corrective lenses that would fit directly over a person’s eye.
More than 130 years later, in the 17th century, René Descartes wrote a book entitled Dioptric in which he explained his idea for a corneal contact lens. Later, in the same century, Philippe de la Hire made drawings of concave lenses placed on the eye.
However, it wasn’t until 1801 that someone put these ideas into practice. Drawing on the writings of Descartes, the genius 28-year-old English physician Thomas Young created the first corneal contact lens and tested it on his own eye.
In the late 1800s, a German glassblower created the first glass contact lens. He put them on German soldiers during WWII because Nazi soldiers were not allowed to wear glasses. After the war, the demand for contact lenses grew around the world. Plastic became the new preferred material over glass.
Since the post-war period, the development of contact lenses really took off. Hard lenses were sold commercially beginning in the 1940s. In the early 1970s, Bausch & Lomb marketed the first soft lenses.
Over the next 30 years, there was an explosion in the popularity of contact lenses. Today, we can buy disposable lenses, colored lenses and lenses with UV filters. It remains to be seen what advancements in contact lenses and vision correction will occur in the 21st century. Will we all ditch our lenses in favor of laser eye surgery one day? Will something completely different be developed to improve vision? Perhaps there is a Leonardo Da Vinci of today sketching out his ideas for a new way of seeing.
