These Contact Lenses Give You Telescopic Vision
From: Popular Science - 07/02/2013
By: Francie Diep

Researchers have created a prototype contact lens-and-glasses system that
lets you zoom in on something to 2.8X magnification. The lenses do the
zooming, while the glasses let you switch between normal and magnified vision.

Right now, the lens' engineers, a team with members from California and
Switzerland, are designing it for people with age-related macular
degeneration, which is the number-one cause of vision loss in Americans older
than 60. The engineers are even planning to start a clinical trial in
November, the BBC reported.

Read the entire article at:
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-07/zoomable-contact-lenses-let-you-magnify-stuff-3x

Links:
Contact lenses bestow telescopic vision
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23142469

Switchable telescopic contact lens
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-21-13-15980

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Telescopic Eyewear
From: Popular Science - 10/2013 - page 34
By: Eric Tremblay

What is it?

A real contact lens that can switch between magnifying and standard vision.
It could be useful for both military personnel and patients with retinal
diseases.

"We built a telescope into a contact lens. It is similar to a hard contact
lens, but embedded inside are four tiny aluminum mirrors. These mirrors
magnify the light, like a telescope, making images appear 2.8  times bigger."

"You can switch between magnified and normal vision by wearing modified 3-D
television glasses. A button on the glasses changes their polarization. And
polarized filters on the contact lenses determine whether the light passes
through their magnifying part or their non-magnifying part. DARPA, a funder
of our research, is interested in super vision. But the lenses may also work
for people with macular degeneration, a disease that degrades the central
part of the retina. Magnification makes it easier for those people to
decipher small things, like text, with the healthy areas of their eyes."

"The lenses are about 10 times the thickness of normal contacts, We’re
planning a clinical trial at the end of the year to see if they're
comfortable. I'll volunteer if I can. I really want to see what they're like."

Eric Tremblay is a researcher at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
in Switzerland.

1.8 million - approximate number of people in the US above age 40 with
macular degeneration