The Gradual Evolution of Contact Lenses
A look at the history of contacts from Allison Chen of the Johns Hopkins Newsletter.
Contact lenses are the sort of everyday object that have become so commonplace to us, it is hard to appreciate just how strange they are in concept. How exactly did we arrive at putting small pieces of glass or plastic on our eyes to improve vision?
Early thinkers who considered the principles behind our modern contact lenses include Leonardo da Vinci, René Descartes and Thomas Young of Young’s modulus fame. Descartes, for instance, considered the idea of a liquid-filled glass cylinder, one end of which would be placed directly on the cornea.