Indian Origin Student Invents Path-Breaking Lens That Can Completely Replace Spectacles

People who wear spectacles understand the woes behind it. If you lose it or break it, you are partially blind. When it is raining, visibility is lower than average. And the wish to have mini-wipers on your spectacles intensifies when you are around steam while cooking or taking a shower.

However, spectacles might soon be making an exit from the market with this path breaking technology.

Hold thy horses before you start on me with the whole lenses have been here since forever, lenses are harmful for eyes, blah, blah, blah. These are no ordinary lenses, my friend. Imagine magical lenses, that adjust according to your eyes and give you a clear view even when you grow old? Only it is not magical, it is as real as you and I.

Devesh Mistry, an Indian origin second year PhD student in the University of Leeds has developed a new lens using the same material that is used to make TV screens and smartphones. This material is long lasting and can restore long-sightedness in older people.

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People over the age of 45 years old often require reading glasses. They don’t use lens during this period as lens lose flexibility over time and lead to a condition called Presbyopia. As we grow old, our eye muscles are no longer able to bring the stiff lens closer to focus the object.

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However, the lens made from this new material will adjust itself according to the movement of eye muscles and bring the object in a clear focus. These can be implanted in the eyes directly with a simple procedure and you are good to go!

These liquid crystals have high potential to change the way lens are made and used. Within next 6-10 years, Devesh plans on developing this product to change the way we see. He said, “Everybody’s happy with solids, liquids and gases and the phases of matter, but liquid crystals lie between crystalline solids and liquids. They have an ordered structure like a crystal, but they can also flow like a liquid and respond to stimuli.”

He has recently won the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 fellowship and his idea is now being funded by reputed research labs and optical companies.

How many of you wish that this product is in place before we turn 45 and roam around like zombies looking for our glasses?