A hard crust of skepticism has formed on the imaginations of Wall Street analysts since the days when mere mention of "uranium," "transistor" or other buzz words could send a stock's price skyward. A new term, however, is having that effect today: soft contact lenses. Within six weeks after officers of Bausch & Lomb, a 118-year-old optical manufacturer, enunciated the words in March, their stock had nearly doubled. Competitors have said that they will market a soft contact lens, too, with similarly salutary results.
Invented in Czechoslovakia eleven years ago, the object of...