A pair of emPower glasses in their charger. The glasses use liquid crystals to avoid the problems of bifocals.
A NEW device may be joining smartphones, iPads and music players that you have to charge overnight: electronic eyeglasses. These glasses have tiny batteries, microchips and assorted electronics to turn reading power on when you need it and off when you don’t.
Traditionally, people who hit their 40s often need extra optical help as farsightedness sets in. They may buy bifocals or no-line progressive lenses. But such glasses have a drawback: the lenses that magnify fine print also blur objects more than an arm’s length away when a wearer looks down, distorting the view when on a staircase, for example, or when swinging at a golf ball.
The new electronic spectacles, called emPower, are intended to handle that problem with an unusual insert in the bottom part of the lenses: liquid crystals, cousins to the familiar ones in television displays. The crystals change how the lenses refract or bend light, just as varying levels of thickness do in traditional glasses.
To call up reading power in the new glasses, users touch the side of the frame. Batteries in the frame send along a current that changes the orientation of molecules in the crystals. Touch the side of the frame again, and the reading power disappears. Turn it off to hit a golf ball; turn it on to read the scorecard.
The glasses, made by PixelOptics in Roanoke, Va., will be on the market this spring, said Dr. Ronald Blum, an optometrist and the company’s president. The estimated price, $1,000 to $1,200, will include frames, lenses, coatings and charger.
Dr. Larry Wan, a managing partner at Family EyeCare Center in Campbell, Calif., tested the glasses with 10 of his patients, all in their 50s. He said they were a hit.
Of course, you’ll have to remember to charge them. The charge lasts two to three days.
But you won’t have to worry if you drop them in the water. “Wipe them off and they should be fine,” he says, although they may require recharging.
Thirty-six different frames made by Aspex Eyewear will be offered initially, Mr. Rodriguez said. The electronic lenses will be manufactured by the Panasonic Healthcare Company in Japan.
The market for emPower glasses will not include the young. “About 80 percent of the people wearing reading glasses are past 40,” said Steve Kodey, director of industry research at the Vision Council, a trade group for eyewear manufacturers and suppliers. But the market is “much bigger than most people realize,” Mr. Kodey says.
Last year, some 20.6 million pairs of progressive lenses, and about 16.2 million pairs of bifocals, were sold in the United States.
adapted from The New York Times - by Anne Eisenberg