Air Optix Night & Day and Other Popular Contacts

Contact lenses are used by millions of people around the world, as a way to correct a variety of vision disorders. Contact lenses function in much the same way as regular eye glasses, although they are placed directly on the cornea of the eyes. There are a large variety of contact lenses on the market, which differ in terms of the materials used in their construction, their strength, and their replacement schedule. One of the most popular brands of contact lenses around the world are Air Optix, a brand of breathable lenses which are manufactured by the large Ciba Vision corporation. Air Optix contacts are available in numerous variations, including Air Optix Night & Day and Air Optix Aqua.

Air Optix contact lenses are a brand of soft contacts that are made from a silicone hydrogel material. This kind of material has not been around for that long, having been introduced by Czech chemists Otto Wichterle and Drahoslav Lim with their work "Hydrophilic gels for biological use" which was published in the journal Nature in 1959. This paper led directly to the launch of the first hydrogel lenses in the 1960s, and became the main type of products made by Air Optix and other large contact lens manufacturers. Hydrogel or Soflens material was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration in 1971, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Along with the popular Air Optix brand, some of the other well known brands of contacts include Johnson and Johnson Acuvue, Focus Dailies, Fresh Look ColorBlends, Avaira, Biomedics, and Pure Vision. Contact lenses are worn by over 125 million people around the world, and are used for corrective, cosmetic, and therapeutic purposes. A thriving online marketplace for contact lenses has opened up over the last few years, as many people learn just how much money they can save by shopping for their contacts on the Internet.