Contact lenses gallery

Scleral lenses by Keith Clifford Hall
Today contact lens practitioners are an inter-professional community, straddling the realms of optometry, ophthalmology and dispensing optics. In many countries contact lens practice is linked with specialism in the cornea and various therapeutic or surgical procedures. For this reason visitors to these pages may also be interested in our separate sections on artificial eyes and intra-ocular lenses.

 bcla logo
The Contact Lens Collection pages are brought to you in association with the British Contact Lens Association (BCLA) Pioneers project.

The MusEYEum acknowledges the extensive contribution of Tim Bowden and Andrew Gasson and the use of their copyright materials.

  1. Early contact glasses

    Early contact glasses

    From Leonardo da Vinci... (yeah, right!)

  2. Hard contact lenses

    Hard contact lenses

    Find out how long you could keep them in.

  3. The Dunscombe Lens

    The Dunscombe Lens

    The earliest British contact lens.

  4. Contact lenses - The great Zeiss secret?

    Contact lenses - The great Zeiss secret?

    The ignored and forgotten story retold again at last.

  5. Soft contact lenses

    Soft contact lenses

    How the Czechs went soft on us.

  6. Rigid gas permeable lenses

    Rigid gas permeable lenses

    RGPs - the hard but breathable solution.

  7. Disposable lenses

    Disposable lenses

    Now you could throw away your used lenses.

  8. Contact lens cleaning and soaking fluids

    Contact lens cleaning and soaking fluids

    Changing customs re hygiene and disinfection.

  9. Pioneers map

    Pioneers map

    We plot the London contribution to contact lens history.