Every eyecare practitioner is familiar with the plastic polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), but what exactly were the origins of this historical material?

The Beginning of Plastic

Like many innovations, the story of who invented the world’s first plastic is a bit controversial. Often, the invention is credited to Albany, NY-based brothers John and Isaiah Hyatt, who patented a synthetic plastic material in 1870.

However, work by British chemist Alexander Parkes predates this patent. In 1856, he created a precursor to plastics by mixing cellulose nitrate with camphor. Some of the early uses of the new plastic, called “celluloid,” included photo film, combs, buttons, records, and billiard balls.

The Birth of PMMA

The story of PMMA begins in Germany in 1928, when Otto Rohm patented PMMA as a paint binder. British chemists Rowland Hill and Dr. John Crawford first synthesized PMMA into a plastic in the early 1930s; this was further refined in 1936 and marketed in Europe and the United States under a variety of trade names. The plastic became extremely popular due to its clear optical properties and its light weight. One of the first uses for the new plastic was to make aircraft canopies as World War II loomed on the horizon.

In April 1938, New York optometrist Dr. William Feinbloom applied for a patent that described a “hybrid” contact lens formed with a central spherical glass optic and a translucent synthetic plastic scleral haptic. The haptic was developed for him by the Bakelite Corporation of America, a plastic manufacturer, and a patent was granted to Dr. Feinbloom in 1940.

PMMA for Contact Lenses

At that time, a number of “all-plastic” PMMA scleral contact lenses were introduced, although the historical record is a bit cloudy as to who can be credited with manufacturing the first PMMA contact lens. At various times István Györffy, MD, in Hungary, Theodore Obrig or Ernest Mullen in the United States, and Harry Birchall at the United Kingdom’s Dixey Laboratories have been credited with being first.

Dr. Györffy was a Hungarian ophthalmologist who took over the Contact Lens Department at the Ophthalmic Hospital and Clinic in Budapest following the departure of Joseph Dallos to London in 1937. He came across the Plexiglas plastic in the spring of 1938 and succeeded in manufacturing and fitting PMMA scleral contact lenses that same year.

Obrig was a New York-based optician who founded Obrig Laboratories in New York in 1938. That same year, engineer Ernest Mullen set up a plastic fabrication company in Massachusetts to make this plastic for contact lens use.

When Obrig heard of Mullen’s work, they set up Mullen-Obrig Laboratory in Worcester, MA. There, they used casts to supply plastic lenses for some of Obrig’s existing patients. In his 470-page book, Contact Lenses, published in 1942, Obrig stated that he produced the first all-plastic scleral lenses in the Worcester laboratory in the fall of 1938.

It was these humble beginnings of PMMA that would later spawn the advent of the modern GP plastics. However, that is another story for another day. CLS