1887 Invention of Contact Lens

The 1887 invention of a contact lens was by a glassblower, Herr F.E. Muller, of Wiesbaden, Germany. He produced the first eye covering designed to be seen through and tolerated by the human eye.

Leonardo Da Vinci originally invented the concept of a contact lens way back in 1508, when he sketched several designs. But the technology to manufacture contact lenses wasn't available until the middle of the 20th century.

In 1936, William Feinbloom, a New York optometrist, fabricated the first American-made contact lenses and introduced the use of plastic lenses.

In 1950, Dr. George Butterfield, an optometrist from an Oregon, designed a corneal lens. this meant the inner surface followed the eye's shape instead of sitting flat.

By 1960, Otto Wichterle and Drahoslav Lim were experimenting with contact lenses made of a soft, water-absorbing plastic they had developed.

Soft contact lenses were finally invented in 1961 by the Czech chemist Otto Wichterle (1913–1998), but the lenses weren't distributed commercially until 1971.

Since then, there have been too many new developments and types of contact lenses to list them all here. And undoubtedly there will be many more over the next century too.