Glasses For The Poor

Posted on 12. Jan, 2009 by thedirtymexican in design, other cool stuff

A physics professor from Oxford has create an adjustable form of corrective eyewear designed to help the world’s poor.

The glasses are designed to be one size fits all, with the owner able to adjust the strength without the help of a trained optometrist.

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.

The inventor, John Silver, not only has a cool pirate-esque name but also an admirable goal: to distribute 100 million of these frames around the world annually. A pretty cool feel-good project and the frames stand up very favourably against some of the cheap crap you see at the optometrist. In fact, they wouldn’t look out of place in a design studio.

Read up more on the project here

Tags: charity, design, glasses, optics, science, technology