Letter: The day a professor prophesied

My decision, in May 1992, to write to the University of Manchester (UMIST) School of Optometry, was a last-ditch attempt to rescue my work on very low-cost contact lens manufacture. I imagine the feelings I experienced at that time were akin to those of the occupants of a small boat which had been drifting on the open sea for months then, low on hope, deciding to fire its last emergency rocket.

Faced by repeated rejection for funding by venture capitalists and having narrowly escaped the jaws of some major contact lens manufacturers keen to frustrate our initiatives, I am not exactly sure why I decided to write UMIST. I know, however, that I had just read of the recent appointment of a Dr Nathan Efron, from Australia, to head the Department of Optometry at UMIST and must have thought I might get some encouragement. Perhaps he would be looking for something new or as an Australian he would be ‘establishment free’. I therefore wrote a letter requesting a meeting to discuss how I believed daily-disposable contact lenses could become a reality enclosing a write-up on my assessment of the failures of extended-wear and re-usable lenses.