Otto Wichterle - Early Contact Lenses

Early Contact Lenses

By late 1961 he succeeded in producing the first four hydrogel contact lenses on a home-made apparatus built using a children's building kit (Merkur) and a bicycle dynamo belonging to one of his sons, and a bell transformer. All the moulds and glass tubing needed to dose them with monomer were also individually made by himself. On Christmas afternoon, with the help of his wife Linda, using the machine on his kitchen table, success! He tried the lenses in his own eyes and although they were the wrong power they were comfortable. Thus, he invented a new way of manufacturing the lenses using a centrifugal casting procedure. A few days later, he completed his patent application and produced over 100 lenses by spin casting. He built several new prototype machines using Merkur toys with increasing numbers of spindles which required the stronger motor taken from his gramophone. With these rudimental devices, in the first four months of 1962 they made 5,500 lenses. The early experimental lenses were called Geltakt and the later production lenses SPOFA. The CSAS inexplicably, and without Wichterle's knowledge, sold the patent rights to the United States National Patent Development Corporation (and later even consented to cancellation of the licence agreements). Actual mass production of contact lenses took place mostly abroad, mainly in the United States.