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Beatles forums => Films, TV Shows, Interviews => Topic started by: tommyg on November 12, 2008, 06:06:08 PM

Title: John Lennon wore Contact Lenses?
Post by: tommyg on November 12, 2008, 06:06:08 PM
Hi,

I was watching an interview of the 1965 San Francisco Cow Palace press conference on DVD.  A reporter asked a question about item being thrown on stage, etc.  John made a comment about his contacts getting falling out sometimes.

I did not realize that in 1965 John Lennon wore contacts.  I knew he wore glasses in his private life cause he was near sited.  I did not know again, that in 1965 John had wore contacts, guess I just can't imagine him cleaning everynight his contacts with saline etc, LOL.

Thank you,

Thomas
Title: Re: John Lennon wore Contact Lenses?
Post by: HeyJude18 on November 12, 2008, 06:39:36 PM
hi
Appearantly he got tired of home much care they took so he switched to wearing his glasses...  That's just what I've heard, correct me if I'm wrong
Title: Re: John Lennon wore Contact Lenses?
Post by: alexis on November 12, 2008, 07:57:42 PM
I didn't even know they HAD contacts in 1965!
Title: Re: John Lennon wore Contact Lenses?
Post by: BlueMeanie on November 12, 2008, 08:43:36 PM
I thought everyone always said John was blind as a bat without his glasses. He is usually pictured wearing them in the studio. I've never heard that he wore contacts.
Title: Re: John Lennon wore Contact Lenses?
Post by: python on November 12, 2008, 10:15:57 PM
apparently,during the filming of the first episode of not only but also,while john was on a swing ,a lens popped out.the film crew helped him looked for it.whether it was found,is another matter.
Title: Re: John Lennon wore Contact Lenses?
Post by: Jane on November 12, 2008, 10:32:04 PM
Quote from: 568
I didn't even know they HAD contacts in 1965!

I am also surprised!
Title: Re: John Lennon wore Contact Lenses?
Post by: harihead on November 12, 2008, 11:49:06 PM
Well, I knew contact lenses were old because I read Sherlock Holmes (specifically, Nicolas Myer's pastiches).

From Wiki:
Quote
In 1887 a German glassblower, F.E. Muller, produced the first eye covering to be seen through and tolerated.[8] In the next year, the German physiologist Adolf Eugen Fick constructed and fitted the first successful contact lens. While working in Zürich, he described fabricating afocal scleral contact shells, which rested on the less sensitive rim of tissue around the cornea, and experimentally fitting them: initially on rabbits, then on himself, and lastly on a small group of volunteers. These lenses were made from heavy brown glass and were 18–21mm in diameter. Fick filled the empty space between cornea/callosity and glass with a dextrose solution. He published his work, "Contactbrille", in the journal Archiv für Augenheilkunde in March 1888.

Fick's lens was large, unwieldy, and could only be worn for a few hours at a time. August Müller in Kiel, Germany, corrected his own severe myopia with a more convenient glass-blown scleral contact lens of his own manufacture in 1888.
Title: Re: John Lennon wore Contact Lenses?
Post by: Kaleidoscope_Eyes on November 24, 2008, 08:56:16 PM
Quote from: 551
Well, I knew contact lenses were old because I read Sherlock Holmes (specifically, Nicolas Myer's pastiches)
I dont remember contact lenses in Sherlock Holmes, I remember pince-nez and mono-whatever its called and glasses but not contacts.

However, not sure about 1965, but in Postcards from the Boys, Ringo writes that when they [John, Cyn and Mo and him] went to Tobago "John had just got contact lenses" and one of them fell into to the pool.

Title: Re: John Lennon wore Contact Lenses?
Post by: Mairi on November 24, 2008, 09:09:27 PM
I remember reading that he switched from contacts to glasses because the stage lights gave him vision problems when he had the lenses in. This is not unusual; it's called the "Halo Effect", and it causes for lights (stage lights, traffic lights, etc) to have a double ring of light around them, or a "halo".