"A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love."
Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher
Bad eyesight has likely plagued humans since they first stood upright. Real solutions were not available until the thirteenth century when eye glasses were invented. Late in the 1880s, two eye doctors and a medical student independently invented contact lenses. Doctors Adolf E. Fick and Eugene Kalt set out to help their patients whereas medical student August Muller wanted to correct his own near-sightedness.
Early lenses were literally a glass lens in direct contact with the eye. For their comfort and health, users could only wear them for brief periods as the lenses caused pain, swelling, and cornea hypoxia. Despite these drawbacks, more than 10,000 pairs sold in the United States from 1935 to 1939. By 1949, sales had reached 200,000 thanks to the plastic potymethylmethylpropenoate (PMMA) and Kevin Tuohy's 1948 invention of plastic contact lenses. PMMA still caused cornea hypoxia and was replaced in the 1950s by hydroxyethylmethacrylate (HEMA), but these lenses required polishing. Bausch & Lomb introduced their revolutionary SofLens® in 1971. By the twenty-first century, the number of people who wear contact lenses surpassed 100 million.
