TruFocals Use Liquid Lens for Adjustable-Focus Eyeglasses

Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - 12:21 in Physics & Chemistry

In 1764, a cartoon showed Benjamin Franklin wearing the first pair of bifocals, and not a lot has changes since then. About 100 years after that, the first pair of adjustable focus glasses was patented in the United States, but it used different fixed-focus lenses. Now, 245 year after Franklin and 143 years after the first adjustable glasses patent, someone has actually developed adjustable lenses that work. According to The New York Times, inventor Stephen Kurtin has developed the first manually adjustable lenses that let the wearer adjust from long distance to short distance viewing at the flip of a switch. The secret is a layer of liquid within the lens that changes shape depending on the situation. Called TruFocals, the glasses are composed of two components, a rigid plastic or glass lens, and a clear liquid that also acts as a lens. A...

Read the whole article on PopSci

More from PopSci

Latest Science Newsletter

Get the latest and most popular science news articles of the week in your Inbox! It's free!

Check out our next project, Biology.Net