Essilor Varilux Comfort 3.0 Colorless Lenses
Varilux is a brand of Essilor International, a manufacturer of corrective lenses. The first version of the lens was invented by Bernard Maitenaz and launched in 1959 and was the first modern progressive lens for the correction of presbyopia. The progressive lens is characterized by the correction of near, intermediate and distance vision.
The idea
Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, Bernard Maitenaz joined the Société des Lunetiers (which became Essel and is now Essilor) in 1948 as a research engineer, after earning degrees from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Métiers and the Institut d’Optique.[3] The idea for the progressive lens came to him while trying on his father’s bifocal lenses. The abrupt transition in power seemed unnatural to him, and he thought it would be more rational to use a lens that corrected distance vision on the top portion of the lens, intermediate vision on the middle portion, and near vision on the bottom.
On March 2, 1951, Bernard Maitenaz filed an envelope with the French National Institute of Industrial Property, which included four drawings and mechanical data[4] that would make it possible to manufacture the modern progressive lens. On November 25, 1953, Essel filed a first patent for his invention.[5]
The first progressive lens
After patents and calculations, this type of progressive lens seemed possible, but it had not yet been manufactured. Maitenaz and his team began producing progressive lenses using a variety of improvised techniques, and by 1958, Essel had developed machinery capable of mass-producing them.
After testing the results on 46 people in January 1959, 5 gave excellent answers, 29 good answers, 2 average answers, and 10 poor answers.
