The Contact Lens: Where did it come from? | Stuff of Genius скачать в хорошем качестве

The Contact Lens: Where did it come from? | Stuff of Genius

Today, contact lenses are used by people across the world. But how did this billion-dollar industry get started? Tune in to learn how a German ophthalmologist created the Stuff of (Optical) Genius. Stuff of Genius tells the story behind everyday inventions. From the bikini to super wheat and everything in between. Viewers will learn the stories of unsung inventor heroes and their trials, tribulations and successes. -- Behold… the contact lens. But where did it come from? Meet Adolf Fick, born in Germany in 1852. Adolf came from a bright family – his father was a professor of anatomy, and his uncle was a physiologist. Adolf didn’t start out as an intrepid inventor, however. First he fought in the Franco-Prussian war. After he returned, he studied ophthalmology, and by 1875 he was a doctor. Eventually, Adolf found his way to Zurich, and it was here that he began researching what he called ‘the contact spectacle.’ Today, we call these contact lenses. Adolf started by experimenting on the eyes of rabbits and corpses. Adolf wasn’t the first person to conceive of a corrective lens placed directly on the eye, but he did make the first successful contact lens. Trust us, you wouldn’t want to wear it. His contact lenses were scleral, meaning that they fit on the white part of the eye. They were also made of glass, and between 8 to 15 millimeters thick. They could only be worn for a few hours at a time. As successive researchers built lighter and more flexible contact lenses, this technology spread across the world, and is still in use today.