Cheap "Liquid Glasses" Bring Clear Vision to the Poor

A retired physics professor is trying to bring clear vision to a billion of the world's poor. His strategy: eyeglasses with easily adjustable, fluid-filled lenses that cost just $1 a pair. His goal: distributing one billion pairs by 2020. The glasses would help schoolchildren learn how to read, fishermen to mend their nets, and women to weave clothing, he says. According to the WHO, there are about one billion people in the world who would benefit from vision correction, most of them living in developing countries. However, in places like sub-Saharan Africa, where people make less than $1 a day and there is roughly one optometrist per one million people, glasses are an impossible luxury. Josh Silver came up with the idea of fluid-filled lenses over 20 years ago while he was still a professor of physics at Oxford University. The glasses contain a clear sac in each lens that ...