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The vision of some extraordinary scientists, and a Thanksgiving
turkey inspiration, has improved eye sight for nearly five million
people worldwide, including over 2.5 million in the United States.
It
was announced today that the inventors of photorefractive surgery,
better known as LASIK, will be inducted into the National Inventors
Hall of Fame this September. Drs. Rangaswamy Srinivasan, James
Wynne and Samuel Blum are being honored for pioneering the development
of laser surgery.
A
surgical procedure intended to reduce a person’s dependency on
glasses or contact lenses, LASIK (Laser-Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis)
permanently changes the shape of the cornea, the clear covering
of the front of the eye, using an ultraviolet excimer laser. The
team’s discovery of the use of this laser for surgical purposes
came out of a research program in fundamental science, in 1981,
while at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights,
New York. The patent was granted to IBM Corporation on November
15, 1988.
Kurzweil
Reading Machine
3-Point Seat Belt
Laser Surgery
Implantable Defibrillator
Ceramic Substrate For
Catalytic Converters
Aspirin
ENIAC Data Translating Device
Bessemer Steel Process
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