How much did you pay for those glasses? As far as Saul Griffith is concerned,
no matter what you paid it was too much. And in a few years his new method of
creating lenses could make them practically free.
Traditionally, producing acryllic eyeglass lenses requires a separate lens mold for each prescription. A well-equipped optometrist must have a large number of different molds on hand, and that gets expensive. The expense and hassle of making custom pairs of glasses became apparent when Griffith visited Guyana as part of a philanthropic effort to distribute used spectacles to the needy.
The problem was that hardly any two people have the same prescription. One eye might be weaker, while the other is stronger, vice versa, or any variation. So if one of the Guyanese was lucky, they just might get a pair of glasses that worked equally well for both eyes. Meanwhile the majority were better off keeping one eye squinted like Popeye.
So Griffith, a graduate of MIT's Media Lab, cobbled together his one-size-makes-all lens mold. Think of it as an adjustable monkey wrench for lensmaking. Hydraulic pressure (Griffith's prototype uses baby oil as the fluid) squeezes the mold into the precise shape needed to form a new lense. Just like a monkey wrench replaces normal wrenches, Griffith's invention can replace an entire kit of single-size molds.
Griffith's device hasn't entered production yet, but he and his prototype were inducted into the Inventor's Hall of Fame in November.
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