Focussed changes...

[InfiniteNow]

Our technology allows us better ability to adapt. We have been a very successful species due to our creative vision...

 

Ah, and vision... we can even improve our own vision when it's not perfect. Glasses and contact lenses, lasik surgery... It's all amazing.

 

I have some very basic questions, but hopefully you will add your own questions and ideas to this thread for discussion.

 

 

Contact lenses: When they are colored (make someone's eyes look blue instead of brown for example), how come the wearer does not see everything as blue?

 

Glasses: Did a monkey somewhere find a clear container for water and notice that it could see more clearly when it viewed the world through it? I mean, how do wonderful ideas like this arise?

 

Lasik: Ask away! This is, after all, the Engineering and Applied Science forum! :beer:

[ronthepon]

Well, about the contacts, it's probably that only the area for the iris is coloured, the center not so.

 

And, the glasses are extremely primitive, they have existed since very long (from what I've learnt).

[Jay-qu]

I have glasses and contacts, not coloured though. I have wondered whether glasses where invented before the advent of our understanding of optics.. I doubt it, but it would be the only time we have found something useful that we dont understand how it works.

 

I may one day get laser corrective surgery, but apparently for best and lasting results you should wait until your well into you 20's

[InfiniteNow]

It's interesting the different concepts involved too. With glasses, you take a window and shape it to effect the light, then put that window in front of the eye. With contacts, you hone a material (what is it, like silica?) to a flexible membrane which shapes the light. But, with lasik, you shape the cornea to shape the light... wild.

 

Interestingly, most lasik still uses a scalpel to cut the flap in the cornea, but coming more and more into vogue is the use of a laser which is both more precise, quicker, and way more cool! :doh:

 

 

Thanks Ron for the clarification on the contacts. I was pretty sure that was why, but thought it could morph into a cool conversation.

 

JQ, maybe glasses were invented prior to our understanding of optics (which I'd venture to guess began around 1600s with Newton and his fellow scientists of the time)...

 

 

Is there an Opthamologist in the house? :shrug:

[Turtle]

JQ, maybe glasses were invented prior to our understanding of optics (which I'd venture to guess began around 1600s with Newton and his fellow scientists of the time)...

 

 

Is there an Opthamologist in the house? :doh:

 

Eye am not an opthamologist, but I can spell one online. :hihi: :hihi:

 

 

 

The oldest known lens was found in the ruins of ancient Nineveh and was made of polished rock crystal, an inch and one-half in diameter. Aristophanes in "The Clouds" refers to a glass for burning holes in parchment and also mentions the use of burning glasses for erasing writing from wax tablets. According to Pliny, physicians used them for cauterizing wounds.

http://www.teagleoptometry.com/history.htm

 

Staying with my current favorite character, Ben Franklin was the one who invented bi-focals. :umno:

[Jay-qu]

ok so we had lenses, it would be a wild fluke if someone picked up one of these primeval lenses that just happened to be the right type for thier eye condition and noticed their vision was better when looking through it, but not to big of a stretch to believe it could have happened.

[Turtle]

ok so we had lenses, it would be a wild fluke if someone picked up one of these primeval lenses that just happened to be the right type for thier eye condition and noticed their vision was better when looking through it, but not to big of a stretch to believe it could have happened.

 

Out:wild fluke

In: quantum fluctuation

 

Technology lurches forward tied to the tails of wild flukes J. Moreover, your proposed primeval lens needn't have the 'right' correction, just a correction. Better perhaps to say a 'remarkable difference', which drew attention to itself and you know personally how humans manipulate things what got their attention.:ebomb:

[TheBigDog]

Benjamin Franklin invented bi-focals. Not a bad contribution. *edit* How did I miss this in Turtle's post?

 

There is another technique for vision correction where a lense is placed under the cornea. It is a thin flat flexible peice of material that acts like a fresnal lense to focus light after it has entered the eye. I remember reading about it some years ago, but I think that the laser surgury has mad it obsolete before it ever caught on.

 

Bill