History of Contact Lenses

The History of Contact Lenses exhibition has become a new part of permanent exhibition Chemistry Around Us. This new exhibition presents the evolving history of contact lenses and introduces to visitors the achievements of great scientist Otto Wichterle, who is the inventor of a material suitable for soft contact lenses production and also the inventor of the method for manufacturing soft contact lenses. The visitors have a great opportunity to see one of the first “contact lenses maker machines” – a “čočkostroj” from 1961, a vial containing part of the first million pairs of casted contacts lenses, a casting plate for preparing prefabricated lenses for contact lenses production by turning them on lathes and many other machines and kinds of contact lenses from different periods. The working model of a “contact lenses maker machine” made from pieces of a Merkur building kit is also part of the exhibition. The model was made by Merkur building kit collector Jiří Mládek.

The exhibition was created in cooperation with the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.