SALZBURG, Austria—Services were held here earlier this month for Wilhelm Anger, 88, the founder of Optyl and Carrera, who was an early pioneer in the eyewear fashion sector through his inventions, his influential early involvement in fashion designer licensing and his technical achievements in modern spectacle lens and frame technologies as well.

Anger founded his first company in Traun in 1948. As a young man after World War II, Anger went door-to-door selling welding equipment to manufacturers. During this time, he became aware of the great need for welding goggles; Anger, 20 years old at the time, purchased 30 goggles and set up a stand at a trade fair in Vienna and sold advance orders for 40,000 pairs.

Anger continued to be intrigued by the eyeglass market. In 1956, he founded Carrera, the sports sunwear maker, inspired by auto racing and the Carrera Panamericana race. The brand later developed further into Carrera International and the company collaborated with automobile designer Ferdinand Alexander to develop the sunglass collection, Carrera Porsche Design.

In 1968, Anger developed a substance called Optyl, a groundbreaking material because it was the first molded plastic that allowed three-dimensional design in a material lighter than traditional acetates, a new approach that would soon revolutionalize the way many plastic eyeglass frames were made. In addition, Optyl was involved early on with the licensing of consumer/fashion brands, including such labels as Christian Dior, Dunhill and others.

Safilo Group purchased Carrera Optyl, as the company was then known, in 1996. A video with Anger, about the origins of Carrera as a sports brand, is posted on the Carrera site. In later years, Anger focused his attention on the virtual world, with Eyemetrics, which uses the computer to measure the eyeglass. Then came the modular system, Eyephorics (known in the U.S. as 2.5 which reduced the weight of the glasses through the use of new, lighter weight materials.

His final project was Lensbond, also now sold in the U.S., a company and a system which focuses on a new approach to rimless eyewear and eliminates distortion and breakage of lenses via a unique adherence process. Anger called these “Perfect glasses.”

One of Anger’s sisters was Anneleise Schmied. The late Arnold Schmied, Sr., the founder of Silhouette was one of Anger’s first employees. Arnold and his wife, Anneleise, went on to found Silhouette International in Linz, Austria, in 1964.

Stated Roland Pfoess, on behalf of all the employees of Lensbon, “Wilhelm Anger was a companion, a pioneer, a visionary and a unique personality.”