The History of Contact Lenses: From Glass Eyeballs to Aesthetic Accessories
Share
Contact lenses have been worn for over 130 years. What started as heavy glass discs that could only be worn for 30 minutes at a time has become one of the most common medical devices in the world — worn by an estimated 140 million people globally. The case they come with, however, has barely changed since the 1980s.
Here's the full history of how we got here — and why the lens case is overdue for its own reinvention.
The First Contact Lens (1888): A Glass Disc Held in With Wax
The first wearable contact lens was created in 1888 by German physiologist Adolf Eugen Fick. It was made entirely of glass, covered the entire surface of the eye, and could only be worn for about 30 minutes before the discomfort became unbearable. Early wearers would anaesthetise their eyes with cocaine before insertion.
Despite this, Fick's invention proved something important: vision could be corrected without glasses. The concept was worth pursuing.
Hard Plastic Changes Everything (1940s–1960s)
The breakthrough came in the 1940s when California optician Kevin Tuohy created the first hard plastic (PMMA) contact lens. Crucially, this lens only covered the cornea rather than the entire eye — which meant the eye could receive oxygen with every blink.
Hard lenses became genuinely wearable. By the 1950s and 60s, they had a dedicated user base. The problem? They were still uncomfortable for extended wear, and getting the fit right required significant expertise from an optometrist.
The Soft Lens Revolution (1959–1971)
The invention that made contacts mainstream came from an unlikely source: a Czech chemist named Otto Wichterle, who reportedly built his first contact lens manufacturing machine from a children's construction set and a bicycle dynamo.
Working with his colleague Drahoslav Lím, Wichterle developed a water-absorbing plastic called hydrogel in 1959. This material was soft, flexible, and oxygen-permeable — a complete departure from everything that came before. The FDA approved soft contact lenses for sale in the United States in 1971. Adoption exploded.
Daily Disposables and the Modern Era (1990s–Present)
The 1990s brought another leap: daily disposable lenses. No cleaning, no storage, no risk of protein buildup — just a fresh lens every day. For tens of millions of wearers, this became the new normal.
Silicone hydrogel lenses followed in the early 2000s, offering even greater oxygen permeability. Today's contact lenses are thinner, more comfortable, and more breathable than anything Fick could have imagined in 1888.
The One Thing That Never Changed
Through every generation of contact lens innovation, one thing stayed the same: the case.
The standard contact lens case — two small wells, push-on caps, clinical white plastic — has been essentially unchanged since disposable lenses became mainstream in the 1980s. It's functional, barely. It leaks, regularly. And for a generation of wearers who care deeply about how their everyday objects look and feel, it's been quietly annoying them for decades.
That's the gap JADE was designed to fill. Not reinventing the contact lens — that's been done, brilliantly — but reinventing the case that holds it.
Because you interact with your case twice a day, every day. It deserves to be something you actually like.