The Eyeglasses that will Change the World

The modern world has already enjoyed the fruits of incredible inventions from the electric light bulb, the air conditioner—thank heaven, or my hair would frizz into the nearest outlet—to the omnipotent computer.  And the technological revolution has never slowed, no matter if the banks are lending or hording reserves in their safes.

And it gets more exciting every day.

This past week the Wall Street Journal awarded prizes to 49 entries in their Technology Innovation Awards contest, and Zoom’s TruFocal eyeglasses came out a top winner.

Eyeglasses, you ask?   We already have millions in the world.   But just as the Swiss produced masses of wind-up watches, the Alps almost fell into the sea when Texas Instruments invented the battery powered time piece, and the world raced for the new ones.

These glasses too, will change everything.  The wearer can not only manually adjust the focus where he or she needs to see something close OR long distance, but can regulate for nearsightedness AND astigmatism.

Did you read that right?

Each TruFocal lens is a pair of two lenses attached to a membrane that contains a clear, silicone-based liquid.  A manual slider on the bridge of the eyeglasses adjusts the focus by changing the shape of the membrane.   Once the lenses are adjusted, the entire field of vision is in focus, the book, the TV, whatever you're looking at.  Everything you need is in one simple pair.

It does everything but windows.

 My husband needs reading glasses and has dozens planted all over the house, but whenever he's searching for a pair, they’ve suddenly disappeared.

So if he has only one, and if he can keep them on while taking a nap…

And who is the man who invented this wonder, who also created one of first word processing programs?   Steven Kurtin, a Californian, began to think about the eyes in 1990 and kept devising new creations until he mimicked the way the human eye stretches and contracts to adjust its focus and view.

Besides the convenience of owning one pair of glasses, the money this invention would save in additional lenses could buy a shelf full of purses over a lifetime.  (My imagined statistics)  And think about the amount of space saved in women’s handbags and the time needed to fiddle through to the bottom to find those damn spectacles.

Next month TruFocals will be renamed Superfocus.

Superfocus? Oh I get it. They must mean concentrating for more than a few seconds on something other than twitter or a comment on facebook.  Sounds deep and intricate.

Hey, but that’s another blog.