The groundbreaking procedure was carried out at London's Moorfields Eye Hospital last week.

The system uses a camera mounted in a pair of spectacles, which transmits a wireless signal to a panel of electrodes that are embedded at the back of the eye.

The first two blind patients to undergo the operation are "doing well", according to hospital staff.

It’s thought the successful trial could open the door for hundreds of thousands of other blind people to have the four-hour operation.

However, a full international trial will be carried out before rolling the process out further.

Mr Lyndon da Cruz, a consultant retinal surgeon at Moorfields who carried out the procedure, told The Telegraph it could be used to treat anyone with “extremely poor vision but a physically intact optic nerve”. 

“The sort of vision we are getting is not good quality but as the thing gets better it will open up to more and more people," he said.

Below the image The Telegraph website used to describe the process.