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In the 1990s, he pursued software applications for retinal sensitivity analysis. Well into his 80s, Dr. Wesley continued to be an active entrepreneur and innovator. [ OTTO WICHTERLE, PH.D. (1913-1998) ]Otto Wichterle was a brilliant Czech polymer chemist who had already worked on oneof the world’s first synthetic fibers. In 1954, he and colleague Drahoslav Lim at the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences invented the first hydrogel material, hydroxyethylmethacrylate (HEMA). They were seeking a synthetic biocompatible material for implants elsewhere in the human body and initially published their findings in the journal Nature in a 1959 article entitled “Hydrophilic gels for biological use.”When a chance encounter with an ophthalmologist on a train gave Prof. Wichterle the idea that the gels he was working with would also be effective in the eye, he began his successful quest to make a contact lens. He later worked with American collaborator Robert Morrison, O.D., and others to improvethe lenses.The original Wichterle lenses provided relatively poor acuity with thick yellowish material, but they were comfortable, according to Mandell.1 The HEMA material was transparent, free of impurities, and was permeable to oxygen and water-soluble nutrients. Prof. Wichterle patented his lenses in the U.S. in 1962 and 1965. Mandell notes that these original lenses were by no means a great success prior to their refinement and commercialization by Bausch & Lomb,1 which eventually acquired the patents for the HEMA contacts.Prof. Wichterle quickly realized that he also needed a faster, more reliable method of fashioning the HEMA1952 1954Dr. Goodlaw suggests that contact lens wear could cause corneal edema.Otto Wichterle and Drahoslav Lim invent HEMA.material into a contact lens than the closed-mold process he’d been using. With various combinations of his children’s construction toys, a hot plate, bicycle parts and a phonograph motor, he built a primitive spin casting device—support for the unsuccessful anti-communist Prague Spring uprising. Finally, after the 1989 “Velvet Revolution” and Czechoslovakia’s turn toward democracy, he was named president of the Czech Academy of Sciences and recognized for hissomething that was familiar to contributions. polymer chemists for other But while Prof. Wichterle struggled against applications but had never been political forces in his own used for contact lenses. country, his concept of a This device was no toy,” lens comfortable enough to Morrison said. “It was a clever be worn for a good portion of creation in which raw liquid HEMA waking hours had revolutionized polymer was introduced via a tube into a mold that the contact lens field elsewhere. Within was spinning.”4 Heat from the hot plate was the catalyst just a few years after Bausch & Lomb to turn the liquid HEMA into a gel. Technicians at his commercialized his lenses (and the spin casting institute helped him automate the device, which he technique, which the company also acquired), the vast would later patent (in 1961) as a method for making majority of Americans wearing contact lenses were soft lenses. He and his wife manufactured 5,500 lenses wearing hydrogel contact lenses, and millions of people in 1962 with the spin casting machine.1 At the time, he worldwide still wear them. reportedly thought the low cost and high reproducibility of spin casting could make a disposable [ ROBERT MORRISON, O.D. (B. 1924) ] lens approach economically feasible, although it would Robert Morrison, a self-described “mediocre student,” many years before that would become reality.3 dropped out of college to join the Army during World Prof. Wichterle’s contact lens work War II. He decided on optometry because Pennsylvania was often hindered for political College of Optometry was accepting veterans without reasons and was not fully full college degrees. After graduation, the ambitious appreciated until late in his young doctor built a thriving practice in his hometown life. When Germany of Harrisburg, Pa., which he later expanded to a part- invaded Czechoslovakia in time practice in New York City, as well. He was very World War II, the Nazis interested in contact lenses and had already been closed the making rigid contact lenses in a small optical lab in his universities, office when he heard about Otto Wichterle’s paper on interrupting his hydrophilic gels. In 1961, Dr. Morrison traveled to what research, and even was then Czechoslovakia, and brought some of the imprisoned him for material back home with him. He wasn’t the first a few months. Later, person to visit Prof. Wichterle and hear about his new Contacts were formed by filling small when Czechoslovakia lens technology—but he was the first to embrace the molds with liquid plastic and allowing came under Soviet potential of a hydrophilic material for contact lenses. them to harden. These “buttons” were influence, he was “Wichterle’s accomplishments might have died then cut to correct prescriptions thrice removed from behind the iron curtain were it not for the persistence | 7senior positions in political purges. In one case, he lost of Robert Morrison,” said Joe Shovlin, O.D. Dr. his position as head of the Institute of Macromolecular Morrison and Prof. Wichterle traded ideas back and Chemistry (where he developed HEMA), due to his - forth over several years, and Dr. Morrison became the Mid 50sPlastic Contact Lens Co (Wesley Jessen) and others make commercially successful PMMA lenses.Newton Wesley and George Jessen began an education campaign to teach their peers how to fit contact lenses.first American to fit the lenses in practice. The two were close friends for a while, although the friendship was strained by the legal wrangling that surrounded the transfer of Wichterle’s HEMA patents.
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