The Plessey Company Plc

Martin W Baskerville

Stephen N Oliver

Clive Trundle

Jack Brettle

Harry G Heller

William Ramsey Maltman

John Whittall

Photoreactive plastics lenses are disclosed which are coated or impregnated with an adamantane 2-spiro-benzo or naphthopyran and with a blue coloring photochromic benzo- or naphthopyran having a nitrogen containing substituent in the 2-position in the pyran ring. The lenses darken in sunlight and fade rapidly at ambient temperatures in the dark or in white light which does not contain a U.V. component. The combination of the yellow/orange coloring adamantane 2-spiro pyran compound with the purple/blue coloring pyran gives a desired brown/grey coloration in the sunlight-darkened lens. The invention includes novel blue-coloring pyran compounds in which the nitrogen-containing substituent in the 2-position is a phenyl group having an amino or substituted amino or nitrogen-containing heterocyclic substituent in the ortho- or para-position of the phenyl group. The basic chromene structure and the suffix N will be used to distinguish the blue-coloring pyran compounds having a nitrogen-containing substituent, namely: ##STR1##

Photoreactive lenses with adamantane spiro compounds

A method is disclosed for manufacturing transparent plastic articles, primarily plano or opthalmic photoreactive lenses, which comprises incorporating fulgides or fulgimides containing an adamantylidene group in plastics casting or moulding compositions or preformed plastics articles and converting the fulgide or fulgimide in situ into a form in which it confers on the article the property of darkening in the presence of sunlight and fading in its absence.

Photochromic compounds and their use in photoreactive lenses

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Towcester, United Kingdom

Martin W Baskerville