Eugene (Gene)
Hirst OBE
(1911-1989) emigrated from
Czechoslovakia
in 1939 to
Auckland, New Zealand, as it was the farthest he could get from
Czechoslovakia.He was originally a dental
technician and made his first contact lenses for a keratoconic patient by taking
an impression of the eye using dental material and moulding a lens over a stone
cast.There were no lathes available
at the time so the optics were fashioned by hand using small brass laps.In partnership with optometrist Douglas Mortimer he started the Hirst
Contact lenses Ltd Company in 1943 and also an optometric practice called
Mortimer and Hirst.Hirst
taught many opticians how to fit lenses.In
1967 Hirst began making soft lenses, adding aspherics and front surface torics
with prism ballast and truncation.In
1970 the company expanded with a branch in Adelaide, Australia, which also specialised in aspheric lenses.The Australian company was sold a few years later to Hydron USA with a
licence to manufacture Con-o-Coid lenses and in 1976 Hirst Contact Lenses Ltd
was sold to New Zealand Optical Ltd and renamed Hirstlens NZ Ltd.It is now run by John Shennon who had joined Hirst as a laboratory
technician in 1968.After the
agreement with Volk lapsed the name Con-o-Coid was replaced by the Hirst Ashpere.
