Because these large "scleral" lenses severely reduced the oxygen supply to the cornea, they could be tolerated for only a few hours of wear and failed to gain widespread acceptance. Fick and Paris optician Edouard Kalt created and fitted the first glass contact lenses to correct vision problems in 1888.Įarly glass contact lenses were heavy and covered the entire front surface of the eye, including the "white" of the eye (the sclera).
Other reports say Swiss physician Adolf E. Muller used Herschel's ideas to create the first known glass contact lens in 1887. But it was more than 50 years later that someone actually produced such lenses, and there is some controversy about who did it first. Such molds would enable the production of corrective lenses that could conform to the front surface of the eye. In 1827, English astronomer Sir John Herschel proposed the idea of making a mold of a person's eyes. Many believe da Vinci's ideas eventually led to the development of contact lenses more than 350 years afterward. Though contact lenses seem to be a recent phenomenon, the famous Italian architect, mathematician and inventor Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) produced the first known sketches (in 1508) that suggested the optics of the human eye could be altered by placing the cornea directly in contact with water.īut it's true that when contact lenses were invented for real came much later.