Contact lens inventor Wichterle subject of centenary exhibition in Prague

An exhibition linked to the 100th anniversary of the birth of the inventor of the soft contact lens, Otto Wichterle, has got underway at the Academy of Sciences in Prague. The famous Czech chemist, who was born in Prostějov, South Moravia on 27 October 1913, produced the first contact lenses in the early 1960s on an apparatus made from a Merkur children’s building kit. The Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (CSAS) sold the patent to an American company and actual mass production of contacts began in the US. Wichterle himself became head of the CSAS after the Velvet Revolution.