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Contact lenses 23.4. 1995

The inventor The contact lenses were first made by Otto Wichterle. He started working on them in his laboratory, but after years of no success, the university stopped giving him money, so he had to work on them at home. He made the first model with kids building kit „Merkur“ and dynamo from his son‘s bike.

Otto Wichterle

Troubles with patents The license agreement was sold to american company which afterwards made a lot of money. But since the contact lenses were made in USA, other companies started to breach the patents. American companies, started courts about patents and because the Czech Republic was a part of the USSR it was hard for Otto Wichterle to join these courts. The courts ended good for the Czech Republic, but we lost approximately 1 billion dollars.