Bausch and Lomb, A Rubber Spectacle Frame and a Partnership

The story of Bausch and Lomb begins with a piece of hard rubber and a desperate optician. John Jacob Bausch arrived in Rochester from Germany in the eighteen fifties with a small case of optical instruments and no money to open a shop. His friend Henry Lomb, a cabinetmaker, put in sixty dollars of his own savings, and Bausch used it to rent a small space on Main Street and stock it with eyeglass frames.

What made the difference was vulcanite, a hard form of rubber that had only recently come onto the market. Bausch saw that vulcanite could replace the tortoiseshell and bone frames that made eyeglasses expensive and fragile. He began making his own frames from the material and selling them for less than the competition. The business grew. Lomb became a full partner. By the time the Civil War ended, Bausch and Lomb was manufacturing lenses, microscopes, and binoculars as well as spectacle frames, and had become a supplier to the United States military.

The company went on to manufacture periscopes for American submarines in both world wars, to develop and produce the lenses used in the first American reconnaissance satellites, and eventually to pioneer the soft contact lens, a device worn by hundreds of millions of people today. Bausch and Lomb operated out of Rochester for a hundred and sixty years, from eighteen fifty-three until its sale to a Canadian pharmaceutical company in twenty thirteen. It was, for most of that period, one of the oldest continuously operating companies in the United States.