Clearer vision for millions of people worldwide who wear progressive lenses is the result of research by the winner of this year's Sir Ian McLennan Achievement for Industry Award, Dr Tony Miller of CSIRO.

Dr Miller's pioneering work on spectacle lens design has contributed to nearly $1 billion worth of lens sales a year for SOLA International, a world-leading spectacle lens company which originated in Adelaide in 1960.

Dr Miller, a mathematician at CSIRO, developed unique tools for designing spectacle lenses. The software tools have allowed SOLA to develop innovative new lenses, including better progressive glasses.

Progressive lenses offer wearers both distance and close up vision correction in a single lens, delivering clear continuous vision without the line found in bifocals.

Over a billion dollars worth of progressive lenses are sold each year to people with 'presbyopia', the gradual crystallisation of the lens in the eye which impacts on quality of vision and affects most people from middle age on.

"As some wearers of progressive lenses know, there can be unpleasant distortion and blurring at the transition between the near and distance zones of the lens," says Dr Miller. "These design tools provide a systematic way for finding the smoothest possible transition and therefore the least possible distortion."

"With these tools, we've been able to design progressive lenses with clear vision over a greater part of the visual field. They are more visually comfortable and more attractive to wear," says Dugald Rose, Research Manager, Lens Design, of SOLA International.

"The tools enable us to develop continually, reducing the time necessary to design and market superior new lens products," he says.

The impacts of this technology have been to consolidate SOLA's position in the marketplace, and improved quality of life for millions of spectacle wearers.

The tools have been under continuous development over the last fourteen years, enabling SOLA to deliver a stream of technically innovative new lens designs. In addition to progressive lenses, the tools have created the opportunity for the development of completely new product categories - such as prescription lenses for wrap sunglass frames.

"Shaping a corrective lens for wrap-around prescription sunglasses without creating blur and distortion can be a design problem," explains Dr Miller.

"In the past, designers used more of a 'trial and error' approach. The new design tools provide a method for quickly finding the best possible design."

Dr Miller's design tools rely on mathematical models of the lens shape. He used a novel mathematical approach to analyse the curved surface of the lens.

The tools provide a systematic approach to finding the best possible lens shape, one which will perform the way wearers want.

"Creating a progressive lens is, in a way, attempting the impossible. It involves combining two or more different lenses, each with a different shape, and trying to get a seamless transition from one shape to the next," explains Dr Miller.

"It's a physical problem that can't be solved perfectly. What you have to do is find the best possible solution - the optimal lens shape."

''Partial derivatives and other mathematical concepts mightn't immediately spring to mind when people think about spectacle lenses. But mathematics is an ideal way to think about and describe the subtle shapes that are involved in lens design," explains Dr Miller.

"If you can express in mathematical terms what you want the lens to do, then you are a long way towards your design goal.''

The award will be presented at a ceremony at the Duxton Hotel, 328 Flinders Street, Melbourne, 12-2 pm, Thursday, November 9, 2000.

Dr Tony Miller, a mathematician at CSIRO, developed unique tools for designing spectacle lenses. The software tools have allowed SOLA to develop innovative new lenses, including better progressive glasses.

More information:

Rosie Schmedding, CSIRO, 0418 622 653

Janelle Kennard, CSIRO (02) 6216 7157 mobile 0418 448 467, Email: Janelle.Kennard@cmis.csiro.au

Dr Tony Miller, CSIRO 0417 863 067, Email: Tony.Miller@cmis.csiro.au

Mr Dugald Rose, SOLA International, (08) 8392 8384, Email: drose@sola.com.au

Images available from: http://www.cmis.csiro.au/mediapics.htm

BACKGROUND

The Sir Ian McLennan Achievement for Industry Award is one of the nation's highest honours for industrial scientific achievement. It was established in 1985 by leaders of Australian industry and technology to recognise outstanding contributions by CSIRO scientists and engineers to national development.

It provides the winning scientist with a grant of up to $15,000 for an overseas study visit appropriate to the achievement. As well as the grant, the successful scientist is presented with the Sir Ian McLennan Medal, and the companies or organisations involved in the development and/or marketing of the innovation are presented with the Sir Ian McLennan Achievement for Industry Award plaque.

Named in honour of the late Sir Ian McLennan, the Award recognises his contributions in applying science and technology to developing Australian industry. Sir Ian was Chairman of BHP for many years and later Chairman of the ANZ Banking Group and Chairman of Elders IXL. He was associated with Australian industry for over fifty years and was an enthusiastic supporter of new technology.

• Originally established in Adelaide, SOLA Optical is now a division of SOLA International, which has its head office in California, USA. Among the largest manufacturers of spectacle lenses in the world, SOLA International has 14 manufacturing sites on five continents and customers in over 50 countries. Today, more than 100 million people worldwide wear SOLA lenses. 

• In 1960, in the basement of a shop in Gawler Place, Adelaide, a small group of optical technicians discovered the amazing optical properties of a new industrial material, plastic.  

• Using only a gas burner and saucepan, the entrepreneurs pioneered a casting process for plastic lenses and subsequently formed Scientific Optical Laboratories of Australia, later to become known as SOLA.

• Eight years later SOLA opened its first overseas subsidiary in Japan. The company now has 14 manufacturing plants and operations in 16 countries including in Eastern Europe, UK, USA, Mexico and Germany. It employs more than 7400 people - 691 in Adelaide.

• In June 1967, the company received its first export award from the then South Australian Premier, Don Dunstan.

• In 1968, SOLA was launched into space when its light-weight lenses were chosen by Captain Walter Shirra, commander of the Apollo 7 spacecraft. The following year SOLA achieved even greater recognition when its lenses were used by the American astronauts who first landed on the moon.

• In March 1995 SOLA was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

• SOLA International sold $900 million worth of lenses for the financial year ending March 31, 1999 - $60 million of which was earned by its Australian operations.

• Each day SOLA's Australian manufacturing operation casts 40 000 lenses and in its 40 years SOLA has produced well over 1 billion lenses - enough to stretch around the equator twice or cover the surface of the MCG 3000 times.

• More than 100 million people in 50 countries wear glasses with SOLA lenses.

• 50 percent of products manufactured in Adelaide are sent direct to customers or exported to other SOLA sites in North America, Canada, South America, Europe, UK, Asia, Africa, India, the Middle East, Pakistan, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands.

• SOLA Australia offers 14 000 different products of which 11 000 are manufactured in Australia, and 3000 imported from offshore manufacturing sites.

• Each year SOLA spends 3.5 percent of its total sales on Australian research and development - more than $12 million last year alone.

• Two of SOLA's newest lenses Spazio - a prescription lens which can fit wrap sunglasses - and SOLAMax - a progressive lens for improved vision for near work - are both examples of leading edge products that are manufactured in Adelaide and exported to the world.