The Inventor Of Contact Lenses … And The Story Of Their Origin

 The inventor of contact lenses could have been Leonardo da Vinci. It could have been others as well. The fact is that Da Vinci envisioned them many years ago, but it took hundreds of years to get them to where they are today.

Let’s talk a little about this and about the story of them.

Finding the inventor of contact lenses is a process of understanding how they came to be.  First of all, Leonardo da Vinci first had the idea of contacts way back in 1508. He envisioned putting a film over the eye that would help improve eye sight. Rene Descartes also attempted to create this product in 1636. Neither of them invented them, technically, but discovered the idea behind them.

It was the 1887 invention of contacts that is considered the true invention. But who invented them? The man’s name was Adolf Eugen Fick. He was a German physiologist. In fact, before fitting them to people he actually fitted contacts to cover animal’s eyes. The product was nothing like it is today, by most standards. It was a lens that was made from brown glass. This heavy material was 18-21mm in diameter.    A few years later, a man name August Muller made contacts that would correct nearsightedness.