案例库 · 产品与设计 · 产品决策 · 1961–1971
这条还没译成中文，下面是英文原文。
Wichterle made contacts out of water-rich gel, so they could breathe.
Instead of a hard disc, Wichterle used a water-holding hydrogel that lets oxygen through and moulds to the eye, and spun-cast it at home on a toy motor.
Bausch & Lomb
那一手
Contact lenses existed before 1961, but the early hard lenses made of glass or plastic were uncomfortable enough that only brave patients wore them. Otto Wichterle, a Czech chemist, kept working on a way to make one that a person could wear all day even after the state health ministry cancelled his research.
The key was the material. Wichterle had helped develop hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA), a hydrogel that absorbs water, and he realised it was biologically inert, compatible with tissue and able to pass oxygen through its water. A lens made of it would stay wet, move with the eye and remain wearable for hours.
With funding gone, Wichterle built the manufacturing tool at home using the Merkur children's toy set and a bicycle-dynamo, then a gramophone motor, to spin-cast the gel into a curved lens. He produced the first soft lenses around Christmas 1961, and the method and material were patented; the patent went to the US Flexible Contact Lens Corporation and Bausch & Lomb, which brought the Soflens to market after FDA approval in 1971.
为什么管用
- A water-filled gel lets oxygen diffuse through, so the eye can breathe under the lens.
- The soft material moulds to the eye, so it stays comfortable for long wear.
- Spin-casting turns a droplet of gel into a reproducible curved lens cheaply.
- A biocompatible polymer was the ingredient that had been missing from hard lenses.
可以搬走什么
A biocompatible material that behaves like the tissue it touches beats a rigid shape that only tolerates it.
后来呢
Soft hydrogel contact lenses became the industry standard and made lenses (and then disposables) a mass consumer product. Wichterle's research, politics and licensing choice meant the man who invented the lens saw little of its fortune, but the lens he built at home transformed vision correction.
资料来源
- Contact lenses – 1961's Christmas present to the world
- Historical Development, Applications and Advances in Materials Used in Spectacle Lenses and Contact Lenses
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