Reactolite Spectacles

Reactolite/Transition Lenses

What are Reactolite Spectacles?

Well... reactolite spectacles are best known to the common mortals as TRANSITIONS glasses; the ones that are clear indoors and get dark outdoors so they could be worn as sunglasses as well as prescription spectacles. Anyways, reactolite and transitions are brands of these kind of glasses; the correct term should be photocromatic or photocromics.
And why do I want to make a website about reactolite spectacles?

Happens to be that I suffer from a weird hereditary disease that affects my vision. My father had a cataract on his left eye when he was 32 years old. The case was weird enough to make it to the medical papers at that time.

This condition is caused by the "wear and tear" of the crystalline membrane of the eye by the overexposure of your eyes to UV rays. As it is caused by "wear and tear", it is usually presents on people over certain age… and that is what make his case weird; 32 years old people should not get cataracts; just like 10 years old kids should not have heart attacks.

Anyways, after a couple of months of his premature cataract operation, his right eye got a cataract too; so his doctor took me and all my brothers to rigorous exams in order to find out if there was a hereditary condition…
So doctor recommended the use of sunglasses at every time since seems like my iris was lazy… and since I was a kid, I wore sunglasses. Of course, with the time, my vision got deteriorated and I started using prescription glasses as well; and this is where the reactolite spectacles came in the scene.
So… how they made it possible?

Well… the glasses (or plastic, depending of the brand, prescription and other particulars) have a chemical component that rearranges its molecules, absorbing part of the visible light spectrum. This chemical component usually is silver halide or silver chloride; and it reacts to the UV rays. Since UV rays are not present in artificial light, these glasses stay clear indoors… but here goes the trick.

Early reactolite spectacles doesn´t react behind a car windshield because the windshield is treated with silver halide as well to block the UV rays... but nowdays these glasses has advanced so much that they work pretty much in every situation, reacting within 20 seconds providing 100% UV-A and UV-B protection.