Famed artist Leonardo da Vinci was the first person to create the idea of a contact lens in 1508, but it was French philosopher Rene Descartes who invented contact lenses for their modern day use.
Contact lenses are placed over the cornea of the eye for corrective, therapeutic, and cosmetic purposes. The contact lens often furnishes the same benefits of a thick pair of glasses, the difference between the two corrective vision devices being that contact lenses are lightweight and visibly untraceable.
Approximately one hundred twenty-five thousand people across the world where contact lenses. Lenses are most people in the United States and Japan. Between twenty-eight and thirty-eight million Americans sport contacts, while lens are laced by thirteen million people in Japan.
Leonardo da Vinci is customarily credited as the man who invented contact lenses. Da Vinci first suggested a method of testing the power of the cornea by submerging the eye in a bowl of water in his 1508 philosophical work Codex of the Eye, Manuel D. Leo’s interest was in how the eye adjusted to exposure to certain elements. Da Vinci was not interested in using contact lenses as apart of corrective vision, as they have become, that optical innovation came with French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes. In 1636, Descartes suggested filling a glass tube with some type of liquid and placing the tube over the cornea. The original design called for the bottom of the glass tube to be shaped to correct vision-the design went belly up when it was deemed as making blinking impossible.
In 1801, British scientist Thomas Young developed an “eye cup” filled with liquid which is considered the world’s closet predecessor to the modern day contact lens. Similar to the contact developed by da Vinci, Young’s contact lens was not originally designed for optical correction. In 1887, Adolf Eugen Fick who constructed the very first successful corrective contact lenses.
Contact lenses fit three basic functions, corrective contact lenses, therapeutic contact lenses, and cosmetic contact lenses. Contact lenses for the purpose of correct faulty vision were the first in the family of visionary caps. These contacts have been called in to correct several optical disorders that cannot be corrected with eyeglasses, including the non-inflammatory disorder keratoconus and aniseikonia, a condition caused by unequal retina sizes. Corrective contact lenses are also prescribed for optical conditions like near-sightedness (medically classified as myopia), far-sightedness (hypermetropia), and irregularly shaped corneas characterized by astigmatism.
Therapeutic contact lenses, or soft contact lenses, are customarily used to treat disorders of the eye that fall into categories like dry eyes, corneal ulcers, erosion of the eye, and bullous keratopathy. Therapeutic contacts have been compared to “bandage lenses,” for their protection properties for non-refractive disorders of the eye.
Cosmetic contact lenses are used to change the appearance of the eye. Chic cosmetic contacts often create color changes in the eye. The American Food and Drug Administration classify cosmetic contact lenses as “decorative contacts.” The costume colors and designs associated with cosmetic lenses have been linked to causing blurred vision as well as optical burning. Theatrical and scleral are types of cosmetic contact lenses.