City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics

290 NOTES TO PAGES 65–70
18. Court papers indicate Hicks continued some plastic-cladding experiments
into 1957. (Board of Patent Interferences, Norton v. Curtiss).
19. Hicks interview. Although Hicks didn’t realize it at the time, a German
named Armand Lamesch had patented the idea a decade earlier as a way of
strengthening glass fibers. See Armand Lamesch, US Patent 2,313,296; ‘‘Fiber or
filament of glass,’’ filed Sept. 23, 1937 (in Germany Sept. 30, 1936), issued Mar.
9, 1943.
20. Curtiss telephone interview. Feb. 7, 1994.
21. Lawrence E. Curtiss, interview, Jan. 20, 1995.
22. Curtiss letter; Hirschowitz, ‘‘A personal history.’’
23. Basil I. Hirschowitz, US Patent 3,010,357, ‘‘Flexible light transmitting
tube,’’ filed Dec. 28, 1956; issued Nov. 28, 1961.
24. Lawrence E. Curtiss, US Patent 3,589,793, ‘‘Glass fiber optical devices,’’
filed May 6, 1957, issued June 29, 1971. Norton and American Optical bitterly
fought this patent in court, delaying it for well over a decade and setting a record
for most voluminous patent litigation!
25. Hirschowitz, ‘‘A personal history.’’
26. Curtiss telephone interview, Feb. 7, 1994.
27. Avery Jones letter.
28. Hirschowitz had to settle for a post at the less prestigious University of
Alabama at Huntsville. Martin Carey, telephone interview, May 7, 1996.
29. That instrument is now at the Smithsonian Institution. Basil I. Hirschowitz,
‘‘Demonstration of a new gastroscope, the ‘fiberscope,’ ’’ Gastroenterology 35,
pp. 50–53 (July 1958).
30. Hirschowitz, ‘‘A personal history.’’ p. 867.
31. Hirschowitz, ‘‘Demonstration.’’
32. The exact timing was the subject of lengthy patent litigation when American
Optical tried unsuccessfully to block Curtiss’s patent. Although Norton
claimed to have made his suggestion in October 1956, the court ruled he could
not document invention before early 1957. See Board of Patent Interferences,
Norton v. Curtiss.
33. Hicks interview.
34. Ibid.
35. Bill Wetherell, conversation, January or February 1994.
36. Robert Greenler, telephone interview, Sept. 18, 1995.
37. The series started with Narinder S. Kapany, ‘‘Fiber optics. Part I, Optical
properties of certain dielectric cylinders,’’ Journal of the Optical Society of America
47, pp. 413–422 (May 1957), and eventually reached part XI in 1965.
38. A bibliography published when he won the Ives award lists 51 papers, but
some were abstracts or co-authored and many were published in the 1930s.
‘‘Brian O’Brien, Frederic Ives Medalist for 1951,’’ Journal of the Optical Society of
America 41, No. 12, pp. 879–881 (Dec. 1951). People who knew him later recall
he never got around to publishing much.
39. Walter Siegmund, interview, June 29, 1993.
40. Lawrence E. Curtiss, telephone interview, Aug. 6, 1997.
41. Figures derived by author from Robert J. Potter and Cecelia E. Beasor, ‘‘The
history and evolution of fiber optics,’’ paper presented at the SPIE Fiber Optics
Seminar in Depth, Apr. 29, 1968, Baltimore.
42. Narinder S. Kapany, ‘‘Fiber optics,’’ Scientific American 203, No. 5, pp. 72–
81 (Nov. 1960).