hmmm.....

[Jacqui]

From a post on my FB page

"Essilor was recently named amongst the World’s 30 Most Innovative Companies for the second year running by US magazine Forbes.
“Innovation, the driver of Essilor’s growth for more than 160 years, underpins our performance and enables us to offer consumers the best solutions in corrective optics. We are proud of this latest recognition by Forbes, which I want to share with our teams working around the world and committed to our mission of improving vision”, commented Hubert Sagnières, Essilor’s Chairman and CEO."

[paulcr39]

Innovation must be french for acquisition...

[jefe]

I was doing a patent search recently, and there certainly were a bunch filed by Essilor employees.

[Chris Ryser]

1849-1972: Essel and SilorEssel was founded in 1849 (then-called L’Association Fraternelle des Ouvriers Lunetiers) as a small network of eyeglass assembly workshops in Paris. It quickly expanded in the late 19th and early 20th century through the acquisition of factories in nearby Parisian neighbourhoods and in Eastern France. Essel soon added frame design and trade to its activities. The firm successfully launched an innovative frame design in 1955 called Nylor which is still used today. The Nylor system introduced a thin nylon thread which embraces the lens and is fixed to the frame’s higher branch. Essel's major breakthrough came in 1959 with the revolutionary invention of Varilux, the first ophthalmic progressive lens.

Silor first started under the name Lissac in 1931 as a retailer of ophthalmic lenses and frames before becoming a lens manufacturer. In 1959, the same year Essel invented the progressive lens, Lissac made an important discovery of its own: the Orma 1000 lens, made from a lightweight and unbreakable material.

1972-1979: Beginning of Essilor

After many years as rivals, Essel and Silor merged on 1 January 1972 to form Essilor, the then third-largest ophthalmic optical firm in the world.
Essilor’s first year of existence was marked by two major events: the creation of Valoptec, a non-trading company composed of stock-holder managers which held half of the company’s capital stock, and the purchase of Benoist-Bethiot, a French lens manufacturer specializing in the production of progressive lenses.

In the mid 1970s, Essilor focused on becoming a true optical group specializing in the plastic progressive lens. Many subsidiary activities are first sold off, but in 1974, Essilor fused Benoist-Bethiot with Guilbert-Routit, creating a subsidiary called BBGR. In 1975, the company was listed on the stock exchange. The innovations by Essel and Silor, Essilor’s predecessors, lead to the launch of the Varilux Orma in 1976 .
The late 1970s were marked by Essilor’s change in strategy of geographical expansion. By making the acquisition of manufacturing plants in the United States, in Ireland and in the Philippines, Essilor began its transformation from being a mainly exporting company to being an international company.

Actually the first part is incorrect. They started out as the "Societe des Lunettiers" (SL) around the late 1940's. This was a group of small optical manufacturers which then got together and operated under the name SL, then SILOR, then ESSEL and finally stuck to ESSILOR.

Actually in the late 1940 the French made frames from RHOPTIX which was nearly as lousy as the KASEIN frames made by the Italians and never got close to the German and Swiss made cellulose nitrate frames.
Also french made lenses were substandard at that time. The Americans and Germans where the champions among lens suppliers.