Can you imagine trying to wear these kinds of contacts?

"Adolf Eugen Fick (born 1 April 1829, in Kassel, Germany; died 21 August 1901, in Blankenberge, Flanders) was a German physiologist usually credited with the invention of contact lenses. He earned doctorate at Marburg in 1851.

In 1845 he introduced Fick's law of diffusion, which governs the diffusion of a gas across a fluid membrane. In 1870 he was the first to devise a technique for measuring cardiac output, called the Fick Principle. In 1887 he constructed and fitted what was to be considered the first successful model of a contact lens: an afocal scleral contact shell made from heavy brown glass, which he tested first on rabbits, then on himself, and lastly on a small group of volunteers. His idea was advanced independently by several innovators in the years that followed."

Brown GLASS? I mean, I know they had to start somewhere, but I can't imagine setting glass directly onto my eye.

(Snagged from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Eugen_Fick . Where else these days?)