One-off
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Director(s):
KUDRNA (TOMAS)
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Producer(s):
ADR PRODUCTIONS
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Territories:
Worldwide.
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Production year:
2005
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Language(s):
German, English, French
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Rights:
TV, DVD, NON-THEATRICAL, INTERNET, VOD
It is a story of a person whose invention is used by more than 100 million people all over the planet today. Sale of patents and licences could have made him a fabulously rich man, if he had not lived in the Communist Czechoslovakia - Otto Wichterle, the inventor of soft contact lenses.
For a long time, Wichterle was unable to find a technology for series mass production of lenses made of soft hydrogels. Eventually, he was inspired by a look into his cup when stirring his coffee - the liquid took on a concave shape thanks to centrifugal force. On the Christmas Eve in 1961, he used the children's Merkur construction kit, a dynamo from a bicycle and a bell transformer to construct a prototype of the centrifugal casting device, in which he and his wife Linda cast four perfect lenses.
In this times Otto Wichterle became a member of the Parliament. But then Czechoslovakia was occupated by armies of Warsaw Pact and Wichterle was persecuted because of his democratical opinion. This national hero became an enemy of the nation. In these years his patents which made the state treasury richer, were soled to U.S. Wichterle was excluded from all negotiations about the patents.
He died on August 18th, 1998. In his obituary, Washington Post stated: "His invention of soft contact lenses has developed into an international multibillion business."