Early contacts
Sir: I am perplexed by your second leader of 22 August, asserting that the first contact lenses were produced in 1961. In 1959, my family's local optician in Yorkshire despatched me to a specialist, Norman Beer, then of Manchester Street in London. I still remember the reverence with which the optician spoke of Mr Beer, pointing to the many books on contact lenses lining his office, the work of the eminent expert in faraway London.
Mr Beer fitted me with a pair of haptic lenses, a type which covered much of the eye, with a small hole over the cornea to lubricate the surfaces. Seeing properly for the first time in my life, I boxed, parachut- ed and swam while wearing them, and Mr Beer remained my hero for many years until he emigrated to Israel — I was told due to swingeing UK taxes, though, espe- cially during the early years when I was a cadet at Sandhurst, he was most under- standing when my account remained unsettled!
The tailpiece of the story? In 1983, still wearing my haptic lenses, an American eye specialist at Shape, calling his colleagues around him to see such lenses for the first time, advised, 'You should have been god- damned blind years ago wearing these!' I now wear modern, smaller lenses — in which I cannot swim.
R.E. Bland
13 Hamble Street, London SW6
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