The Washington Post reports that an English physician, Joshua Silver, has designed eyeglasses that absolutely anybody in the world, no matter how poor, can afford, and he has plans to distribute a million pairs in India this year.
The glasses are based on a very simple principle: clear plastic lenses encase a flexible sac, and silicone oil can be added or removed from the sac with a syringe. The more oil in the lenses, the stronger the correction. The user adds or removes oil until focus is achieved, and then the syringe is removed.
According to the article, for many people in developing nations, a pair of glasses can cost “more than a month’s wages.” But these glasses, which “look like something from the back of Woody Allen’s closet,” cost only $19 to make, and Silver hopes that the cost can be brought down to a few dollars per pair.
