Our story begins in Germany where our founder - John Jacob Bausch - was born in 1830. By the age of 18, he had completed an apprenticeship as an optician, but could not find work that paid a living wage. So the young Bausch, nearly 19, left the poverty and political unrest of his homeland to seek a more prosperous life in America. He arrived in New York City in 1848.
At this time, the optical trade in the United States was in its infancy. Eyeglass frames were made of horn, gold or silver. The lenses were ground by hand and of inconsistent quality. All of the lenses and most of the frames were made in Europe and they were expensive.
Bausch settled first in Buffalo, New York, where life was quite miserable. There was a cholera epidemic. His clothes and shoes were stolen. He could find no work as an optician so he was a cook’s helper and a porter before moving on to Rochester, about 100 miles to the east.
In Rochester, he started out as a wood-turner – shaping wood with a lathe and a buzz saw, saving his money to open a small shop selling imported spectacles but the business failed and he returned to woodworking.
His luck was no better. Soon after he married, he lost two fingers in a buzz saw accident and the recovery was long and painful. Bausch so feared the saw that he knew he could never be a success as a wood-turner so he decided to give the optical business another try. And that’s where Henry Lomb comes in. Henry was also born in Germany, in 1828. He was trained as a carpenter, and immigrated to the United States – right to Rochester – at the age of 21. The German community in Rochester at the time was small and tightly knit and the two young men quickly became good friends.
Following his accident, Bausch’s brothers in Germany sent him eyeglasses, magnifiers, hairbrushes and Meerschaum pipes from Europe and he peddled them around the Rochester area. Eventually he decided to open a shop in 1853 - and this is where our company got its start.
Needing more money, he borrowed $60 from his friend Henry Lomb, and he told him that if the business ever became big enough to support a partner, he’d take him on at equal terms. As far as we know, that “handshake” agreement was the only contract Bausch and Lomb ever had with each other – an agreement that lasted until Henry Lomb died 55 years later.
Bausch was not really a retailer – he was more of an inventor. In his free time, he experimented with making eyeglass frames from different materials. One day he found a piece of hard rubber in the street and tried to make an eyeglass frame from it. It was less brittle than horn, and less expensive than gold or silver. First he tried carving frames from the hard rubber, then he began melting the rubber on the family’s kitchen stove. Finally, with the help of his sons and Henry Lomb, Bausch molded the softened rubber into frames, and finished them with lenses imported from Europe. The rubber frames were a success and the business grew.
With the outbreak of the Civil War, gold became more scarce and expensive, so the demand increased for Bausch’s less expensive, more durable rubber frames and the business was operating profitably for the first time.
From those humble beginnings, there’s a lot of history packed into 150 years. Here are a few highlights: Henry Lomb enlisted in the Army and left to fight in the Civil War, sending back his soldier’s pay to Bausch to keep the business going. He returned to Rochester as a captain and discovered that his friend’s business had money in the bank for the first time.
John Jacob Bausch sold the retail end of the business to his brother, Edward, and focused on manufacturing. Henry Lomb became a sales agent and went to New York City to open a sales office there.
Only a few microscopes existed at the time, but scientists like Pasteur were demonstrating that there was a relationship between cell growth and microbes and health and disease. German microscopes, hand-tooled by skilled labourers, were imported into the U.S. and sold for more than $1,000 each. The eldest son of founder J.J. Bausch, Edward Bausch, convinced his father to try manufacturing microscopes. Edward patented the world’s first mass-produced microscope and their company won international recognition for its excellent craftsmanship.
By the 1880s and 1890s, Edward Bausch had used his knowledge of the working of the human eye to invent a new type of photographic shutter – the iris diaphragm. Another Rochesterian just starting in business was very enthusiastic about the new shutter. George Eastman, founder of the Eastman Kodak Company, and Edward Bausch became friends and Bausch & Lomb produced all photographic lenses for Kodak until 1912.
In the early 20th century, there was another major development for the company – Bausch & Lomb entered the optical glass business. Optical quality glass is different from ordinary glass because even the most minor flaws or imperfections are unacceptable for precision instruments and eyeglasses. William Bausch, another son of the founder, began an experimental glass laboratory and B&L soon became the largest American manufacturer of optical glass.
In the 1920s, the U.S. Army Air Corps asked B&L to develop a special optical glass that could overcome the brutal glare conditions encountered by its pilots. After much research, the company produced the Ray-Ban sunglass – which exceeded the exacting Air Corps standards and established a world-class brand.
After World War II, the company commercialised the first Cinemascope motion picture projector lens – allowing filmmakers to produce movies that could be shown on a wide screen without distortion. In 1954, Bausch & Lomb received an Academy Award, an Oscar, for this contribution to the motion picture industry. On March 24, 1958, the company’s stock was listed on the New York Stock Exchange for the first time.
As the company entered the 1960s – another revolution was on the horizon. In the late 1950’s a Czechoslovakian scientist, Otto Wichterle (Vick-ter-lee), developed and patented a new product – a “soft” contact lens. He licensed the patent to another company, which then set out to enlist one of the existing “hard” contact lens companies to manufacture it. None would. Bausch & Lomb, which up until then had only produced spectacles for vision correction, took the risk. It paid off. When we received approval to market the lens in the U.S. in 1971, it changed the course of the company and the industry.
Sales of soft contact lenses and associated products helped move Bausch & Lomb into the Fortune 500 largest manufacturing companies by the mid-1970s. And contact lenses and lens care products soon become key to Bausch & Lomb’s success.
In 1981, the decision was made to exit the ophthalmic (eyeglass) business – a very tough decision to leave the business on which the company had been founded. B&L embarked on a growth strategy focused on healthcare products. We acquired a maker of lasers for ophthalmic surgery and instruments used for the detection of diseases of the eye; signed a marketing agreement for ophthalmic products developed by the Moscow Institute of Eye Microsurgery; bought a developer of computer-based practice management systems for eye care professionals -- and then began to expand even beyond the field of eye care.
The expansion continued. Bausch & Lomb bought a business that produced laboratory animals for research and entered the dental, skin care and hearing aid businesses – all the while continuing to build on the contact lens franchise with the acquisition of Polymer Technology, maker of made rigid gas permeable contact lenses. We also entered the ophthalmic pharmaceuticals arena with our acquisition of a line of medications from Muro Pharmaceuticals, followed by the very significant expansion of our drug franchise through the purchase of Dr. Mann Pharma in Germany.
Global expansion continued with the opening of a new contact lens and solutions plant in China. Bausch & Lomb was one of the first foreign companies to establish a joint venture in China and the first to make a profit. We opened sunglass and contact lens plants in Waterford, Ireland, and a contact lens and sunglass plant in India. In our core vision care business, we announced our first daily disposable contact lens, and acquired the Award contact lens manufacturing facility in Scotland.
As the 1990s wore on, it became clear that our heritage and our core competencies were in the eye care field – and our ability to be successful in businesses far removed from our legacy and our expertise was limited. So we began to divest non-strategic businesses including sports optics, oral care, thin film technology, skin care, hearing aids, lab animals – and ultimately even the sunglass business. At the same time, we were building the platform for the technology based healthcare company for the eye that we are now. Key acquisitions included Chiron Vision and Storz Instruments, which put us in the forefront of the ophthalmic surgical business.
Every company with any longevity has its highs and lows. The good ones get through the lows and keep growing. When you look back over fifteen decades of history, you have to gain confidence that this is a company that has the guts, the creativity, and the people to continue the remarkable heritage of new product innovation and customer quality that has withstood the test of time. So here we are, once again focused on eye health and dedicated to perfecting vision and enhancing life. If John Jacob Bausch and Henry Lomb were here today, I think they would be proud to see what their company has become. And I believe that they would be especially pleased that even after 150 years, we are still dedicated to their legacy of invention, innovation and quality.