Bausch and Lomb

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Bausch and Lomb was founded in 1853, as optician and German immigrant John Jacob Bausch borrowed $60 from his friend Henry Lomb to set up a small optical goods shop in Rochester, New York. The two men were soon business partners, and in 1861 the company started manufacturing rubber eyeglasses. As the blockade during the American Civil War resulted in a dramatic rise in the price of gold and horn, the demand for Bausch and Lomb spectacles grew.

During the late 1880s and the 1890s, Bausch and Lomb started producing photographic lenses, binoculars and telescopes, and when president Roosevelt started building up the naval fleet Bausch and Lomb were commissioned to manufacture high-precision lenses for optical measurement. A research department was set up to develop new products and improve old ones.

Wars turned out to play an important role in the development of Bausch and Lomb, as during World War I and World War II military products stood for 70% of the total production. In 1926, the world-famous Ray-Ban sunglasses were developed for pilots.

Bausch and Lomb made a major breakthrough with the CinemaScope lens, as this allowed for cinemas to screen films with the wide screen effect. In 1971, made of Poly-HEMA and funded by a three million dollar investment, Bausch and Lomb brought to the market their first contact lenses. Contact lenses had previously been made primarily of glass, and these new contact lenses, which were given the name SofLens, became well-known world-wide for their softness and comfort.

Just over a decade later, Bausch and Lomb went through some major reorganisations, with certain company divisions being sold off and other divisions, such as the contact lens production, being strengthened. As the Ray-Ban glasses were doing considerably well, the sunglasses division was continued. Bausch and Lomb eventually went onto producing the lenses for the cameras that captured the first satellite images of the moon.

With a 156 year heritage, Bausch and Lomb is now among the market leaders in contact lens production, operating on a global level. Research, development and production plants are all coordinated from the headquarters, which is still in Rochester. Bausch and Lomb currently has 13,000 employees in 36 countries, and the three main business areas are vision care, pharmaceuticals, and surgery aids and implants.

At 28% of the turnover, the manufacture of contact lenses such as SofLens Daily Disposables and SofLens Comfort accounts for the biggest part of the Bausch and Lomb business activity. Contact lenses for all types of vision correction, including astigmatism and presbyopia, are manufactured. PureVision contact lenses, Bausch and Lomb’s newest and most advanced range, are so oxygen-permeable that they can remain in the eye for up to a month without being taken out at night.

The second largest business division, at 25%, is the manufacture of lens care products. This includes Bausch and Lomb’s own ranges of cleaning, disinfectant and pH neutral solutions for both soft and hard lenses and those with especially sensitive eyes. Bausch and Lomb also manufacture a line of nutrition products for eye health, such as the PreserVision Eye Vitamins.

The Ray-Ban high-end sunglasses division was sold to Italian Luxottica in 1999, and in 2003 Bausch and Lomb received a 100% rating on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality index.