Dec 31, 2008: Adapti-Glasses

[xoxoxoBruce]

This is big... or should I say this could be big... very big.
Here is a picture of a Zulu tribesman wearing glasses.
Ho hum, so what?
He was his own optician.

Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. 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.

Excellent idea, although they would have to be made tough because a leak would ruin them. Mr Zulu could duct tape the bridge but a cracked lens would kill them. Now the trick is to make them cheaply enough and get them to the people that need them.
Of course there is still a lot of eye problems, like astigmatism, that these glasses won't help, but for all the people that just need magnification, whoopee.

The implications of bringing glasses within the reach of poor communities are enormous, says the scientist. Literacy rates improve hugely, fishermen are able to mend their nets, women to weave clothing. During an early field trial, funded by the British government, in Ghana, Silver met a man called Henry Adjei-Mensah, whose sight had deteriorated with age, as all human sight does, and who had been forced to retire as a tailor because he could no longer see to thread the needle of his sewing machine. "So he retires. He was about 35. He could have worked for at least another 20 years. We put these specs on him, and he smiled, and threaded his needle, and sped up with this sewing machine. He can work now. He can see."

Mr Silver is an ambitious man. He wants to distribute a billion pair of these glasses. I hope he can find enough help to pull it off.
Link

The Cellar wishes you a Happy New Year... right people?..... Yeah.....Right.....Yes..... For sure.....Oh yes..... Happy new year everybody