The birth of contact lenses was not a slow methodical evolution but rather a simultaneous development from several individuals over a short two-year window of time from 1886 to 1888. Working independently of one another, Adolf Eugen Fick and Eugène Kalt developed glass scleral shells to correct keratoconus, while brothers Friedrich and Albert Müller produced a non-powered glass shell to protect an eye. Additionally, August Müller worked to correct his own high myopia.

The Search for the First

Debate continues as to who fit the first contact lens. However, chronologically, most agree that it was either Fick, an ophthalmologist at Switzerland’s University of Zurich Eye Clinic, or the Müller brothers from the glass artificial eye firm F.Ad. Müller Söhne in Wiesbaden, Germany (Figure 1).

In September 1887, Fick submitted an article to the journal Archiv fur Augenheilkunde titled “Erine Contactbrille” (a Contact-Spectacle) that described the use of his glass contact lenses on 17 patients. The lenses were manufactured by Zeiss in Jena, Germany. The article published six months later in that journal, while at the same time, an English version appeared in Archives of Ophthalmology titled “A Contact-Lens.” This article marked the most significant landmark in the history of contact lenses, as it described the very first clinical application of the device.

Additionally, five unpublished documents authored by Fick to Professor Ernst Abbe, the technical director at Zeiss, dated from June to September 1887 are in the Zeiss Archives in Jena, Germany. This seems to indicate that Fick was probably fitting glass scleral lenses as far back as late 1886 or early 1887.

The story gets a bit less clear with the contributions of Friedrich and Albert Müller. In either 1886 or 1887, a patient of Dr. Theodore Sämisch, a professor of ophthalmology at the University Eye Clinic in Bonn, Switzerland, had a malignant tumor of the right eyelid. The eyelid had been partially removed from the right eye, resulting in severe exposure. At Dr. Sämisch’s request, Friedrich Müller blew a thin glass shell similar to an artificial eye that was fit to the patient. The glass shell became known as the Müller-Schen Kontaktsschale (contact adhesion spectacles). It resembled an artificial eye in appearance, with the corneal section clear and the scleral haptic opaque (Figure 2). The patient continued to wear the shell day and night, retaining usable vision for the next 20 years until his death in 1907 (Müller and Müller, 1910).

Still a Mystery

So, who fit the first contact lens—Fick or the Müllers? The definitive answer remains uncertain today and is perhaps lost to time. CLS

For references, please visit www.clspectrum.com/references and click on document #301.