lens.html - Short for contact lens: a small, very thin piece of plastic which can be worn inside the eyelid, in contact with the
eyeball , to correct faulty vision; often in the plural lenses. Etymology: An abbreviated form of contact lens. History and Usage: Contact lenses were invented by
Dr A. E. Fick of Zurich as long ago as the 1880s (when they were made of glass), but did not become available to the general public until the forties, and
have only been widely worn from
about the sixties onwards. The full term contact lens had
been abbreviated to contact by the early sixties and to lens by the seventies; by the eighties it
was nearly
always abbreviated in colloquial use, although the full
term remained in use among opticians. The technology has developed during the seventies and eighties to make several types available: hard lenses, the original type available to the public, are made of rigid plastic; soft lenses, made of a hydrophilic gel which is soft to the touch and moulds itself to the shape of the eye, were introduced in the sixties as less
harmful to the cornea; gas-permeable lenses, which are more rigid but allow the passage of oxygen to the eye, were developed
soon afterwards and became widely available in the eighties. The
fact that
contact lens became the slang name for a mixture of hallucinogenic drugs in the eighties
is an indication that lenses are considered commonplace in modern society. Although many astigmatics can wear lenses successfully, prescribing and fitting them can be complex. Which? June 1987, p.
272 These are extended-wear lenses...and people should be aware that they run a 20 per cent higher risk of bacterial infection. Woman's Journal Mar. 1990, p. 155
