Contact Lens Pioneers

Frank Dickinson (1906-1978)

Frank Dickinson was born in Blackpool and spent most of his optical life in St Anne's, Lancashire. He travelled extensively and on his second trip to the US in 1939 to meet transatlantic contact lens pioneers such as Obrig and Feinbloom, he encountered Keith Clifford Hall. Dickinson wrote the more technical aspects of their joint book on contact lenses published in 1946.

In 1948 he visited South Africa and moved there with the family in 1949, becoming the country's first contact lens practitioner. The climate, unfortunately, did not suit his family so they returned to Lancashire in 1950. He was a talented artist and as well as being a church organist was a fine pianist in a variety of styles. In addition, he was a popular lecturer and after dinner speaker.

Dickinson is probably best known for the Microlens, which was a result of international co-operation.  He had been working on making lenses smaller and thinner and found, at the 1951 Congress of the International Optical League, that his old friends John Neill from the US and Wilhelm Sšhnges from Germany had similar ideas. They agreed to co-operate in their research and the Microlens, a term coined by Dickinson's wife Muriel, was the result in 1953.

The lens, made from PMMA, was 9.50mm in diameter with a single posterior curve and a very small edge bevel. It was fitted some 0.2 to 0.3mm flatter than flattest 'K' and was very much smaller and thinner than anything that had previously been available. The three-way collaboration also resulted in the foundation of the International Society of Contact Lens Specialists. Later enhancements to the back-surface design and modern gas-permeable materials have given us the hard lens of today.

Dickinson was president of the British Optical Association in 1961-1962 and received an honorary MSc from Bradford University in 1972.  He had been awarded the first Herschel Medal from the ISCLS in 1957 and is now remembered by the Frank Dickinson Collection of contact lenses in the BOA Museum in London and the suite named after him in the Optometry Department at UMIST.