The Englishman who wants to give glasses to developing countries

The project is, perhaps, an over-ambitious one: give a billion people his self-adjusting glasses at a cost of less than a dollar a pair. In a report dedicated to the British optician, Corriere.it described him as “The man who gives sight back to the poor”.
But the enterprise is anything but easy, not to mention practically impossible, even though Joshua Silver (62), a former professor of optics at Oxford University, has been able to distribute 30,000 pairs of his glasses in 15 countries, worldwide.

It all began on March 23, 1985, the Corriere recounts. When Silver was still a university professor he asked a colleague if it would be possible to make lenses that could be adapted without the help of an optician or expensive machinery. Glasses that would adjust themselves according to the eyes’ requirements. “It was then that I understood how to do it”, explained to the British newspaper, the Guardian. He made plastic lenses into which he placed a bag of liquid and put two small syringes full of liquid on the frames. The lenses adjust to personal requirements by adding liquid until vision becomes clear. The syringes are then removed, the frames sealed with a cap and the glasses are ready. “The mechanism is so simple” Silver explained, “that there’s almost no need for instructions. All those who received the glasses were able to adjust them very precisely on their own. And they could see again”. The point (which Silver describes as “obvious”) is that a system has to be found which gets around the lack of opticians in some parts of the world. In the United States or in Great Britain, the number of people who wear glasses is between 60 and 70%. In developing countries, the figure drops to 5%. The reason is simple. In Great Britain there is one optician for every 4,500 people; in sub-Saharan Africa there is one for every million inhabitants. “But even if there were more, nobody could afford a pair of glasses that are produced normally”.

The initiative is undoubtedly praiseworthy, especially for Third World countries where any help is welcome in situations of widespread poverty and the last thing anyone pays attention to is design. But it is only help and not a solution to all the problems. Silver himself recognizes that his glasses won’t work for astigmatism and they cannot replace a specialist who can diagnose glaucoma or other diseases. However, he continues to maintain that he is going “in the right direction”.