Contact lens
One fine day in 1952, Otto Wichterle took a train from the city of Olomouc, in his native region, to the capital, Prague, nearly three hundred kilometers west. He was 39 years old and professor of macromolecular chemistry at the Technical University of Prague. He looked over the shoulder of the man next to him to see what he was reading: a trade magazine article about using titanium in an artificial eye. Wichterle started a conversation with his fellow traveler and said: "It would be much better to look for a solution in plastic, material that connects to the surrounding tissue, for example from the hydrophilic polymers category." The traveler turned out to be an official with the Ministry of Health who examined substances for their use for medical purposes. And so it came about that Wichterle received a government subsidy for research into polymers that retain water, into imitations of human tissue. To develop the new artificial eye, he first practiced with small pieces of plastic. In 1957 he put such a piece on his own eye. It was too rough, it burned, and it was unpleasant. But Wichterle immediately saw - literally and figuratively - that his artificial gel could serve not so much to cast an artificial eye, but to make an artificial lens with which you could adjust the view.