The Least, First

Water-filled glasses, adjustable for anyone, may change 3rd-world life

with 3 comments

Check out this brilliant invention: These water-filled lenses can be produced by the millions and adjusted on-site by the users themselves, many of whom stand less than a one in a million chance of ever visiting with an optometrist.

clipped from www.core77.com British inventor Josh Silver, a former professor of physics at Oxford University, has come up with a game-changer of a product design with his water-lensed glasses.[...] Inside the device’s tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles. The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. [...] [W]ith very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription [...] Silver’s goal is to help the hundreds of millions of people in developing countries who suffer from poor eyesight [...] [I]n Ghana, Silver met a man … who had been forced to retire as a tailor because he could no longer see to thread the needle … He was about 35… “We put these specs on him, and he smiled, and threaded his needle, and sped up with this sewing machine. He can work now. He can see …”

Life-changing, don’t you think?

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Tags: eyeglasses, water-filled+glasses, vision, eyesight, optical, eye+care, optician, sight, blindness, Monte Asbury

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3 Responses

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1. Wow, Monte, that so totally ROCKS! I have to wear contact lenses just to be able to find my glasses, and I think of how hard it must be for people too poor or too far away to get any help with stuff like this. Dang, this is great news.

   

   99

   January 7, 2009 at 2:29 am

   Reply
2. Beautifully clever! I love it.

   

   Wendy Babiak

   January 3, 2009 at 10:33 am

   Reply
3. Some American invetors http://americaninvetors.blogspot.com,very detailed!

   

   Toma Ion

   January 3, 2009 at 5:04 am

   Reply