This is Joshua Silver, and while those glasses he’s wearing might make him look like someone you wouldn’t want near your children, they are in fact a cheap gadget which could change the developing world.
Silver’s specs are adjustable. The lenses comprise flexible membranes containing silicone oil. Using syringes (seen in the picture), the amount of oil can be adjusted and the refractive index of the lenses changed. The syringes are detachable.
This is big, because it means a single, uniform product can be mass produced and then tweaked at its destination without specialized equipment. Silver has already shifted 30,000 pairs — 20,000 of which were bought by the US Department of Defense and sent to Africa and Eastern Europe.
The current price is a pretty cheap $19, but is expected to drop to a fraction of that as scale economy kicks in. Let’s just hope somebody a little less patronizing buys the next batch. According to the Washington Post, the DoD-shipped specs have been customized:
Those glasses have a small U.S. flag and "From the American People" engraved in small print on one side of the frames.
From a Visionary English Physicist, Self-Adjusting Lenses for the Poor [Washington Post]
