Glasses that adjust focus.

The New York Times (8/5, D3, Markoff) reports that applied physicist Stephen Kurtin, PhD, has invented eyeglasses that "he believes can free nearly two billion people around the world from bifocals, trifocals, and progressive lenses." The eyeglasses "have a tiny adjustable slider on the bridge of the frame that makes it possible to focus alternately on the page of a book, a computer screen, or a mountain range in the distance." Kurtin "has succeeded in creating glasses with a mechanically adjustable focus," which "he says...are better than other glasses and some forms of LASIK surgery." Just "this month, TruFocals, the company he founded three years ago, has begun selling its first adjustable focusing eyeglasses through a small group of optometrists and will soon sell directly online." The "first to become commercially available" in the US, the TruFocal eyeglasses will "sell for $895." They "consist of a lens that is comparable in thickness to that of commercial eyeglasses."