I remember watching Euro News on television about these new self adjustable eyeglasses. The people who are taking advantage of this new technology are the people from Malawi, Africa. The inventor of these glasses is Joshua Silver a professor from Oxford University. He invented these glasses for people in poorer countries that don't have access to health care professionals. He has been working on this invention since 1985...Wow!
The lenses are made up of two thin glass/sacs (two in each slot, if that makes sense)and on both sides of the frame there's like syringe with a dial where you can add or reduce the amount of fluid in the membrane, making it possible to change the power of the lenses.
I found an article(and the pic on the left) on the guardian web site saying that in Britain there is one optometrist for every 4,500 people and in sub-Saharan Africa the ration is 1:1,000,000.....isn't that crazy?
Prof. Silver hopes to distribute one million pairs in India within a year but his true goal is to be able to reach 100 million people a year, with a target of one billion in total by the year 2020 according to the telegraph article.
I wish news like this would make it to american television or newspaper because I had no idea this even existed until watching Euronews. If it did make it here in the states then, MY BAD. If you would like to read more about it, you can click on both links above. You could also click here to check out the video on Euronews site.
I think I'm a little trigger happy with this blog thing but I just can't help myself. I was surfing the web and I came across this article with the title: "Riding Inside a Dolphin" on the WSJ(Wall Street Journal) web site. The title itself immediately got my attention....my first reaction was WTF? but it's not what you think.
It's actually a watercraft that is shaped like a sea animal and that could go underwater like a marine mammal (well, sharks are more like a fishes) and it's really pretty cool. A Northern California company called, Innespace Productions are the ones creating these fantastic submarine/watercraft's looking things. Innespace Productions was founded in 1997 by Rob Innes who is New Zealand boat builder that has 15 years of experience in boat design and manufacturing and Dan Piazza who's a certified machinist with 20+ years experience in fabrication(building metal structure by cutting, bending, and assembling) and engineering.
The company has been working and developing this creation for about 15 years and have been commercially producing these boats for about a 1 year and a half. Each watercraft or Seabreacher is custom built and designed. There's three types of the watercraft's; the first is the Seabreacher X(Shark Inspired), the second is Seabreacher Y(Killer Whale Inspired) and lastly the Seabreacher J(Dolphin Inspired). I think my favorite one of the three is the Killer Whale....it really looks like a whale. Customers are able to pick the color that they want and even input iPods and GPS systems.
Ok, after hopefully reading this and looking at the video you're asking yourselves, " how much is this thing? I want to get one." right?????? Well, according to the Innespace website you could reserve an order number and the starting price ranges from US$65,000.00 to US$ 90,000.00 for the Dolphin Inspired and the starting price for the Shark Inspired is US$81,000. I didn't see the starting price for the Killer Whale anywhere on the site. If you're still interested in buying any of the above you must put a refundable deposit of US$1,500.00. The cost of the boat is really expensive but I think that the deposit is somewhat cheap..I was expecting it to be much higher than that.
I hope you found this interesting. I enjoy reading and learning about new technology. When I come across stuff like this; it amazes me and can't believe how far we've come and I can't wait to learn what new innovative technology is out there. If you would to check out the website yourself you could click on the first link above or click here: http://www.seabreacher.com/ there's also a FAQ Section
