City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics
City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics
City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics
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282 NOTES TO PAGES 23–27<br />
37. It was known as Lucite in America and Perspex in England; its proper<br />
name is polymethyl methacrylate. It also was used in tongue depressors. ‘‘Cold<br />
light (Lucite) surgical instruments,’’ Scientific American, Feb. 1939, p. 99; see also<br />
‘‘Piped light aids surgeons and dentists,’’ Popular Science, Mar. 1939, p. 108.<br />
38. Dictionary <strong>of</strong> Scientific Biography (Vol. XIII, ‘‘John Tyndall,’’ pp. 521–524).<br />
39. John Tyndall, notebook preserved at Royal Institution, London, dated Friday<br />
evening, May 19, 1854.<br />
40. John Tyndall, ‘‘On some phenomena connected with the motion <strong>of</strong> liquids,’’<br />
Proceedings <strong>of</strong> the Royal Institution <strong>of</strong> Great Britain 1, pp. 446–448 (1854).<br />
He says his demonstration repeats Savart’s work on fluid flow.<br />
41. Faraday’s memory failed gradually, beginning around 1840; the problem<br />
was episodic, so he was able to work much <strong>of</strong> the time but could not concentrate<br />
at other times. He became quite senile before his death in 1868 and probably<br />
suffered from what we now call Alzheimer’s disease. L. Pearce Williams, Michael<br />
Faraday: A Biography (Basic Books, New York, 1965).<br />
42. Colladon in Comptes Rendus says the water-jet apparatus was demonstrated<br />
in London, probably in 1841, but does not say where or by whom. Faraday gave<br />
two or three lectures at the Royal Institution in 1841, which was the worst year<br />
<strong>of</strong> his first breakdown in health. His topics almost certainly did not include light<br />
guiding. <strong>The</strong>re is no evidence that either Colladon or de la Rive spoke at the Royal<br />
Institution at the time, although they could have lectured elsewhere in London,<br />
such as at the Adelaide Galleries or the London Institution. Faraday spent much<br />
<strong>of</strong> his time that year in Switzerland away from other scientists, as he tried to<br />
recover his faculties, but even if he did not see the demonstration, he must have<br />
heard <strong>of</strong> it. (Frank James, Royal Institution, e-mail Sep. 14, 1998).<br />
43. <strong>The</strong> mistaken crediting <strong>of</strong> Tyndall with first guiding light in a water jet is<br />
a reminder <strong>of</strong> how easily and widely mistakes can spread. Tyndall’s original 1854<br />
account (Tyndall, ‘‘On some phenomena’’) does not claim the idea <strong>of</strong> light guiding<br />
is new, but also does not explicitly attribute it to someone else. He wound up<br />
credited with the idea half a century after his death largely because he described<br />
the experiment in one <strong>of</strong> his widely-circulated popular books, where it was rediscovered<br />
in the 1950s (an American edition is John Tyndall, <strong>Light</strong> and Electricity,<br />
Appleton & Co., New York, 1871, pp. 41–43). It was natural to credit the eminent<br />
Tyndall with the discovery. <strong>The</strong> first publication I have found to credit Tyndall is<br />
Narinder S. Kapany, ‘‘<strong>Fiber</strong> optics,’’ Scientific American 203 (5), 72–81, November<br />
1960, and Kapany told me he found the reference (telephone interview, Feb. 13,<br />
1996). Kapany’s thesis advisor Harold H. Hopkins may have played a role in<br />
finding the Tyndall reference; he was well read and had a large library <strong>of</strong> old<br />
science books. As fiber optics spread, most people—including myself—accepted<br />
Tyndall as the originator <strong>of</strong> the idea. <strong>The</strong> Optical Society <strong>of</strong> America later named<br />
its major fiber-optics award after Tyndall. <strong>The</strong> late Kaye Weedon uncovered Colladon’s<br />
and Babinet’s 1842 reports in the late 1960s, but although he gave several<br />
talks on their work, he never published an account, and few others took<br />
notice.<br />
Chapter 3<br />
1. Charles Vernon Boys, ‘‘Quartz fibres,’’ Nature, July 11, 1889, pp. 247–251.<br />
2. Oszkar Knapp, Glasfasern (Glass <strong>Fiber</strong>s) (Akademiai Kaido, Budapest, 1966,<br />
p. 9; translation by Max J. Riedl).