Sight for the World

Check out this story from NPR's Weekend Edition, about a retired Oxford professor named Joshua Silver who has developed self-adjusting eyeglasses. He wants to get them into production for $1 a pair so they can be distributed to the 3 billion people in our world who are too poor to afford glasses. (Currently, they cost $19 a pair in limited production.)

As the glasses are adjusted by the wearer, tiny syringes shoot more or less liquid into the lense. Here's how the Guardian described it:

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. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.

Aside from the good news in this story, though, what Silver's work reminds me of is how easy it is to not think about the lives of people you don't hear about -- such as the 3 billion people around the world who have less than optimal vision, but have no access to glasses. What would my life be like in that circumstance? Pretty damn miserable. My glasses are something I take totally for granted.

Thanks to Joshua Silver for thinking about them, and spending 20 years to do something about it. As the NPR story noted, he's had offers to sell the technology for exclusive commercial use, but has turned them down to fulfill his vision of sight for the world.

Note: As a commenter on NPR noted, this design doesn't deal with astigmatism.